Edge: The Loner

“How much do you charge?” Edge asked.

“Fifty cents a night, feed and water. When I got room. I ain’t though.”

“I figure you can find it for two dollars,” came the reply.

“He, he,” the man giggled, getting to his feet with remarkable agility for one so old. “Rich men I like.”

He held out a hand for the reins and Edge gave them to him. The man stood quietly as Edge removed the saddle, swung it over a peg on the wall. Then the horse was led to the back of the stable, persuaded gently into a vacant stall. The man returned and held out a hand again, this time for money. Edge slapped a dollar bill into it. The man’s expression showed irritation.

“You said two dollars, mister.”

Edge grinned his icy grin. “And you said fifty cents when you got room. You got room. I want my change.”

The man’s expression became ugly with rage. “I could lame that horse of your, mister,” he spat out.

Edge’s hand flashed to his back appeared brandishing the knife. His voice hissed low. “If that horse ain’t fed and watered and fit to ride when I want it, you won’t have any hands to play poker with.”

The man’s rage withered under Edge’s steady gaze and he suddenly dug a hand into his pocket, came out with some loose change and dropped a great deal through fumbling fingers as he counted out fifty cents.”

Edge put the money away and slid the knife into its sheath. “Obliged,” he said, and moved to the rear of the stable.

“What you doing?” the man demanded, failing to get any authority into his voice.

“Looking,” Edge said.

He had to investigate six stalls before a grunt of discovery revealed his success. Then he went into four more and each time found what he expected to. Each of the five horses stood quietly, calmed by the gentle touch of Edge’s hand on their backs as he stooped to examine the brands seared into their hind quarters. In each case it was identical, a simple, ‘J&J’ with no border.

“You recognize that, mister?” the old man asked nervously as Edge peered over the wall of a stall at the last horse Edge had examined.

Edge nodded. “Stands for Josiah and Jamie,” he said absently, hardly realizing he had spoken aloud as his expression seemed to melt from pensiveness to nothing and then reform into a look of terrible hatred.

The man shrunk back into the shadows as Edge pushed out of the stall, a directness of purpose in his long strides as he made for the door. There was just the sound of his footfalls on the ground, and the jingle of spilt change as his boots trod among it, scattering it. But then a volley of shots rang out and Edge’s hand streaked to his holster, came up with the Remington leveled.

As the old man gasped at the speed of the draw Edge took a final stride to the door and stuck his head out. He saw Gail and Honey turn from fastening the restaurant door and stare down the street. He followed the direction of their claimed attention and saw a crowd milling in front of the hotel, the numbers swelling as he watched. The saloon piano belted out a few more notes, sounding far in the distance, then the player hesitated, struck another chord and stopped.

“They got the sheriff,” a man called excitedly and Gail and Honey started to run towards the activity.

Edge took off after them.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THERE was upwards of fifty people outside the hotel when Edge got there, formed into a wide half-circle facing the sheriff’s office. Mean-faced bounty hunters, frightened saloon and dancehall girls, grim-faced citizens of stature and their shocked wives. There was even a group of three children, two boys and a girl who looked on in wide-eyed amazement. All attention was focused on the sheriff’s office, its windows smashed, door swinging open. The only sound as the audience held its breath in anticipation of what was the come was the faint, regular creaking of the sheriff’s rocker as, empty, it dipped and tipped with the momentum of its recent occupant.

Then the crowd let out its breath in a single rush of escape, the sound magnified by the silence to the height of a sudden gust of prairie wind. Sheriff Peacock had appeared in the doorway of his office, legs apart, arms stretched out so that he could rest his hands around the doorframe to either side. His elderly face, etched with the experience of so many hard, bitter years in the far west, seemed to be set in a position of repose. It was an expression, which took no account of a big patch of blood in the center of his shirt-front, which spread wider as he stood there, like an orator wondering how to begin his address to the waiting, expectant audience.

“Sheriff,” somebody said from the rear of the crowd and the wounded man seemed to recognize the voice, accept it as an invitation to emerge.