Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (9 page)

‘Munro, watch out! There’s – ‘ A gunshot blasted across the warning, deafeningly loud within the confines of the cell area of the law office.

Edge spun and drew his Colt as the pungent smell of black powder smoke filled the stove warmed atmosphere of the small building.

‘Vic! Oh my God! Somebody’s shot Vic!’ Hannah Foster’s voice reached a high pitch of shrillness then was abruptly cut off as she sobbed and rattled the bars of her cell. Edge crossed the office and halted behind Hooper who was rooted to the threshold between the office and the jail.

‘I never figured this would happen!’ the lawman gasped and swayed like he was on the brink of collapse. ‘Through the window, look!’

Edge registered the scene in the scant light that entered the rear area of the building from the lamp on the desk in the front office. Saw that Vic Munro was spread-eagled face down on the floor between the cell door and his cot, an enlarging bloodstain on the back of his coat, faintly shiny in the meagre level of light. The memory of the raucous sound of the gunshot, the still acrid taint of it in the air and the extent of the wound in the narrow back of the emaciated man signalled he had been hit from close range. By both charges of a double barrel shotgun: the weapon fired between the bars of the single window in the rear wall. The woman was pressed against the wall of bars dividing the cells, ineffectually reaching forward through them with both arms at full stretch. Which was not far enough for her fingertips to come even close to touching the blood drenched form of the man who was surely dead. She showed an expression identical to that Edge had seen earlier today: on the face of another woman whose man had been gunned down in front of her. A similar degree of shock was carved into the face of Hooper as the impassive Edge spun and started back across the office, the walnut butt of his Frontier Colt clutched in a rock steady grip. And his heavy footfalls on the floorboards were the only sounds to be heard for stretched seconds while Hannah Foster’s lips gaped open in a silent scream and Hooper’s mouth flapped to shape words he could not yet speak.

Edge wrenched open the door and once outside his feet thudded less obtrusively on the hard packed ground. His horse at the rail snorted softly. Inside the office, Hannah Foster began to wail, lacing the tearless sounds with curses.

‘What happened?’ Earl Mann yelled as he took two steps away from the door of his grocery and came to an abrupt halt: maybe petrified by the sight of Edge’s drawn revolver that gleamed dully in the frosty moonlight.

On the far side of the softly babbling Stony River lamplight illuminated Arnie O’Brian as the blacksmith lumbered out from his premises. And at the other end of First Street lights showed from the houses of the preacher and the doctor. Dogs barked on distant farms. Edge moved across the front of the law office, swung around the corner and reached the rear as a figure plunged into the brush at the fringe of the timber that grew close to the back lots of the buildings on this side of the street. For a moment he considered giving chase: racing across the open ground and into the trees, initially exposed in the glittering moonlight. Then making dangerous sounds while he tracked the killer who could afford to make slow and silent progress while he took the time to reload his shotgun.

‘Did you see who it was?’

Edge looked toward the rear of the law office and saw Hooper had let himself into Munro’s cell: now peered out through the barred window from where the double barrel blast had been fired.

‘Only where he went, feller.’ He gestured with the revolver toward the area of timber where Munro’s killer had plunged out of sight. ‘Not what he looked like.’

‘Shit, this ought never to have been!’ the lawman groaned morosely. ‘What the hell’s happening to this town?’

‘Is griping about your lousy town all you can do, lawman? Ain’t you gonna go after the sonofabitch who killed Vic? You people were quick enough to . . . ‘ Hannah Foster’s voice trailed away and then she vented a shriek.

‘What the . . ?’ Hooper’s head was abruptly withdrawn from in back of the bars.

‘Put up your gun, Gene!’ a man in the law office ordered. ‘And you best quiet your noise, woman!’

Edge heard a footfall at the side of the building and saw the powerfully built, tobacco chewing blacksmith standing there with his thumbs hooked over the front of his broad belt at either side of a big buckle. On his time-lined face was an odd expression frozen midway between aggression and apology. It was clear he did not relish the situation but there was about his stance a determination to do whatever was expected of him.

‘Something, feller?’ Edge asked evenly as he glanced to left and right and saw O’Brian was alone and unarmed. ‘He un-cocked the Colt and slid it back in the holster.

‘You do right, mister.’ O’Brian could not disguise the relief in his drawling tone while his squint eyed, side whiskered face remained a mask of earnestness.

‘It’s what I mostly try to do these days.’

‘You’re a man who’s keen on minding his own business, Edge. So it shouldn’t be no hardship for you to stay clear of what’s happened here?’

‘And you’re a man who ain’t no town gossip?’

‘Uh?’ O’Brian looked both dumb and determined now.

‘You’re not about to fill me in on what’s happened?’

During the exchange there had been a hum of low toned talk within the law office. Then, further away, footfalls thudded on First Street and a man called from there:

‘Arnie?’

‘We’re okay out back!’ The blacksmith lowered his voice to ask of Edge. ‘That’s right, I reckon? Things are good here?’

‘I’ve been better, but I’ve been worse.’ Edge moved to the corner of the building where O’Brian turned, then he trailed the man to the front: almost banged into him when the blacksmith halted suddenly, surprised by the size of the crowd that had formed so quickly before the law office.

Upwards of twenty, which was about half the population of Brogan Falls. Maybe only the women and children missing from the grim faced group that stood in the cold, brightly moonlit night. A few carried repeater rifles and most had a holstered revolver on their belts, but the only clear threat was seen in the bleakness of the expressions on some of the familiar faces. Behind their
bravura,
most of them were uncomfortably nervous, some afraid.

‘Arnie?’ The powerfully built, close-cropped white haired Mike Costigan was one of those who looked ready to use the Winchester canted to a shoulder. Earl Mann asked tentatively: ‘You see who it was that did it, Arnie?’

‘Not me. Maybe Edge saw.’ The blacksmith from the Deep South scurried to join his fellow citizens, like he was more shaken than he showed and needed strength drawn from being close to the others.

Then all attention shifted to the open doorway of the law office as footfalls sounded and shadows were thrown into the street by the light from the lamp on the desk. Doc Driscoll stepped outside first, the approaching seventy years old man looking more lugubrious than usual and announced officiously: ‘The man is most surely dead. Killed with two barrels of a shotgun discharged at close range if I am not mistaken and I know I am not.’

‘And the whore?’ somebody asked.

Driscoll supplied: ‘Although she refuses to allow me to examine her as far as I can see the woman prisoner is physically unharmed.’

‘Through no fault of your lousy marshal!’ Hannah Foster accused. ‘What kind of a – ‘

‘Shut up, whore!’ Elliot McGowan snarled with uncharacteristic venom as he closely followed Hooper out of the office, his revolver levelled at the lower back of the lawman.

‘Right now Gene’s not in any position to protect himself, let alone you.’

Despite all else, Edge experienced a sense of relief. He had not recognised McGowan’s voice heard through the barred window at the rear of the building and until he saw him in the doorway behind Hooper he had suspected it could be the drunken farmer who blasted Munro to death.

‘Elliot, Earl, the rest of you men . . . ‘ A mixture of emotions that included anger, perplexity and fear gave Hooper’s voice a strangled tone. ‘You’re all acting crazy. Munro was murdered in cold blood and we don’t even know if it was him who shot Wen – ‘

‘He was the one sure enough, Gene!’ McGowan snarled viciously, his button eyes glittering dangerously. ‘And it galls me to know he died so easy for what he did to my daughter! Me and the rest had something else in mind for the murdering bastard!

‘There’s still the woman, McGowan!’ Owen Nelson yelled from the rear of the group and pushed to the front, showing an expression as vicious as McGowan’s tone. ‘Ain’t that so, boys?’ The rancher was sixty-five or so. Squat with a round, grey haired head set upon a short neck. He wore wire-framed spectacles that seemed too small for his fleshy, ruddy complexioned face. The lenses gleamed in the moonlight as he snapped his head from side to side, tacitly demanding support from his fellow citizens.

Edge did not see anybody offer what the rancher sought and most of them shook their heads and expressed horror at what he implied.

‘That’s right!’ McGowan snarled. ‘We’ve still got the whore he had with him when he killed Wendell! She can pay double for what they did! That’ll make up some for the bastard getting off so light!’

‘You’re wrong, McGowan,’ Edge said coldly and swung to face the doorway where the enraged farmer continued to hold a gun on Hooper. His right hand was curled to go for the draw but six inches remained between the tips of his fingers and the walnut butt of the revolver. A tense silence lasted perhaps five seconds while McGowan slowly turned his head and fixed an uncomprehending gaze on Edge. At the same time his body made a measured partial turn which acted to swing the pistol in his fist away from its aim at the small of Hooper’s back.

The unseen Hannah Foster demanded to know from her cell: ‘What’s going on out there, damnit?’

‘Edge?’ McGowan was almost pathetically quizzical, his tone reedy.

‘The lady had nothing to do with making your daughter a widow, feller,’ Edge told him evenly. ‘You’re not doing the right thing and you’ve got a choice to make.’

Nelson started: ‘Look, mister, I don’t reckon this has got anything to do with – ‘

‘Don’t make matters any worse that they already are, Owen.’ Hooper raised his right hand to drape the butt of his holstered revolver.

‘Choice?’ McGowan continued to be perplexed, looking like a man newly awakened from a vivid nightmare as he peered unblinkingly at Edge.

‘Between right and wrong,’ Edge supplied and moved his hand to make contact with the Colt in his holster. ‘Get it right and see the error of your ways. Or be dead wrong.’

Nelson challenged sourly: ‘You’ve got a frigging nerve, Edge!’

‘Owen, I’ve got a whole lot of them,’ McGowan countered before Edge could reply. And carefully, without taking his tiny eyes of Edge, he re-holstered his ancient Colt and finished: ‘And right here and now all of them are jumping like crazy.’

‘Shit, he wouldn’t have gunned you down!’ the brash rancher growled, his eyeglasses glinting in the moonlight. He spat at the ground in front of him.

‘There’s not going to be any more killing in Brogan Falls today!’ From the strained look on Hooper’s face it obviously needed a lot of effort for him to sound like he had confidence in what he was saying. ‘All of you men go on home now. And get a good night’s sleep if you’re able. Then, knowing you and your families like I do, I figure most of you will be real ashamed of what you could have been a part of here tonight.’

Some of the group needed no further prompting to do as the lawman demanded: spun on their heels and moved quickly along the street. But a handful hesitated and looked to McGowan for guidance.

The farmer held back for no more than two stretched seconds before he stepped down off the porch and started in the direction of his farm: without a word and with just one backward glance. And it was as if the sobering effect of the violence and how close he had

come to triggering more had worn off: putting him in danger of staggering from the effects of too much unaccustomed liquor.

‘What’s going on out there I asked?’ The shock of Munro’s death and fear for her own life seemed to have drained Hannah Foster of the ability to generate further anger and she sounded afraid.

Hooper turned from looking after the men departing in two directions, holstered his revolver and raised both hands to blow warm breath into the cupped palms that were maybe cold on account of more than the bite of the frosty night air: were frigid with the dried sweat of fear.