Ten Grand (5 page)

It was from this side that the two men approached and Edge did not have to move in his bogus unconsciousness to watch them, for he had landed on his belly, head art the side and facing that way. He watched them with eyes cracked open the merest extent, seeing them through the dark curtain of his lashes. The sharp-shooter had been good or lucky.  It had been a long-range, downwards shot from two hundred yards away, a hundred feet above the canyon floor. He saw them appear from each side of a huge boulder, stand for a moment looking down at him, then start forward. Even winded as he was, his head still ringing with the sound of the shot and the thud of his body on to the hard ground, Edge knew he could gun them both down in less than two seconds—if the Henry repeater was in his hands. But the rifle was still in its boot on the dead horse and Edge had no way of reaching it without revealing his awareness.  He had to assume that the sharp-shooter was good, not merely lucky and if that was so he would be able to loose off any number of accurate shots before Edge had even rolled over to look for the Henry.  So Edge merely moved his right hand—on the blind side from the men—and discovered the only weapon within reach was a jagged, fist-sized piece of rock. His fingers closed over it.

“Must of knocked himself out in the fall, Luke,” one of the men said excitedly.

“Damn rifle pulls to the right,” his partner replied with low anger.  “Way the Government is so close-handed, sometimes the horse is worth more than the outlaw.”

“He’s facing this way, Luke,” the other said, refusing to have his enthusiasm quelled by Luke’s chagrin. “Recognize him? Wonder how much he’s worth?”

Luke was tall and thin to the point of emaciation.  He had hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes; a chin that came to a point. He was dressed all in black, from high-crowned hat to boots, and walked with a casual looseness. His partner was shorter, fat by comparison, with a round, moonlike face decorated with a moustache longer on one side than the other.  He was all in black, too.  Both carried rifles, wore revolvers in holsters on the right hip, tied at the thigh.  Edge didn’t recognize them as any of the many bounty hunters who worked out of Peaceville.

“Whoever it is, Chuck,” Luke said, raising his rifle, “makes no difference whether he’s dead or alive.  Dead is easier for us.”

“Hey, no,” Chuck said with concern, reaching out a hand to slap down the rifle barrel.  “We don’t even know if he’s an outlaw.  I told you not to shoot till he was close enough to take a look at.”

Luke sneered. “Only two kind of lone riders in this part of the territory,” he said. “Outlaws and bounty hunters.  If he’s one he’s worth money, and it’s easier money if he’s dead. If he’s the other he ain’t no use to us living and dead he can’t cause no trouble.”

Their voices got easier to hear as they got closer and Edge liked what they were saying less and less with every step they took.

“Hey,” Chuck exclaimed with glee when the pair were no more than five yards away, feet kicking up dust that threatened to erupt a sneeze from Edge. “The guy’s got one of them Henry repeating rifles.  Confederates used to say the Union army could load on Sundays and keep firing all week with them.”

The man let his own, single shot weapon fall to the ground and rushed forward, sprang over the prone figure of Edge as if he presented no more danger than a solid rock. With Chuck out of his range of vision, Edge concentrated on Luke, who was the more dangerous of the two.  He heard the Henry being slid from its boot, the breech mechanism worked.

“Terrific,” Chuck said, like a kid who got what he wanted for Christmas.

“Yeah,” Luke replied dully, but his eyes shone with an interest that belied his tone.  Edge saw he carried an old and battered Spencer.  He licked his lips as if he could taste the joy his partner was experiencing. He glanced down once at Edge, then stepped over him. “Don’t recognize him,” he said shortly.  “Let me see that gun.”

“It’s mine,” Chuck said with petulance, then yelled in surprise.

Edge sprang into movement just as the tall man stepped over him, forcing himself up from the ground with all the power in his arms so that his hard skull smashed into Luke’s crotch. As Luke’s cry of pain followed Chuck’s yell, Edge continued the fast rise to his feet. The tall man grew taller, his legs straddling Edge’s shoulder, then went crashing sideways as Edge turned, his outstretched hands clawing for Chuck to break his fall as his rifle dropped to the ground. But Chuck wasn’t there.  He went over backwards, stumbling against the dead horse as Edge released the jagged rock, sent it with a crunch of breaking bone into the little man’s nose.

Luke hit solid earth with a great force that knocked the wind out of him, but he was tougher than he looked and he bounced to his feet, turning as he came up, facing Edge.

“Hundred dollars is all,” Edge said as Luke went for his Colt, never made it. Even without a backswing, Edge’s leg shot forward with incredible speed and force, the toe of his boot finding the exact spot where his head had landed moments before. Both Luke’s hands streaked to his nether region as his knees buckled and his face took on if mask of pain.  “Figure I’m worth more,” Edge droned softly, hand snaking to his back, flashing out with the knife.  Luke had sunk to his knees now, his mouth working to fight out words, failing.  Edge held the knife low, pointing towards the injured man.  Luke, eyes wide with horror, unable to tear his hands away from the source of his agony, rocked once and fell forward, his own weight carrying him on to the knife’s needle point.  It penetrated to great depth, just below his Adam’s apple. “Hey, don’t get cut up about it,” Edge said as he withdrew the knife and pushed the dead body sideways, turned to find Chuck.

The little man was just getting to his feet, staring in pained surprise at the blood on his palm as he pulled his hand away from his mashed nose. His other hand was gripping the Henry by its barrel, which was the wrong place.  He realized this when Edge spoke to him and he found himself looking into the muzzle of the Remington.  They faced each other across the dead body of the horse.

“Chuck.”

“You was awake all the time?”

“Yeah, Chuck. That’s my rifle you’ve got.”

“You killed Luke?”

“Luke killed my horse.”

Sweat mingled with blood. The moon face implored mercy. His voice trembled.

“You a bounty hunter?”

“No.”

“Outlaw?”

“Hundred dollars worth.  My girl gave me that horse.”

He shot Chuck in the hand holding the Henry.  The rifle clattered to the ground as Chuck screamed, his other hand going to nurse the injury.  Edge shot that, too. Twice, blowing off two fingers and drilling a neat hole through the palm.

“Oh, God!” Chuck pleaded, and fell to his knees.

“Don’t know how my girl felt about the horse, but I kind of liked it,” Edge said and emptied the revolver in a series of closely grouped shots where Chuck had once had a heart. The little man went backwards in a great deal of blood. “Be happy on that great bounty hunt in the sky,” Edge said wryly, and spat into the dust.

“You’re empty, mister. This ain’t.”

Edge froze as the woman’s voice spat out the words from behind him.  Close, but not close enough to make a grab.

“You been counting,” he said chidingly.

“And I didn’t need my fingers,” she answered.  “Drop the gun and turn around to look at me, mister.  I wanna see what I’ve caught myself that’s worth a hundred dollars.”

CHAPTER SIX

SHE wasn’t pretty.  Examining her through his narrowed eyes, grinding his teeth in an expression of anger at allowing the woman to get the drop on him, Edge thought she was downright ugly. She was tall, with a haggard, dirt-streaked face from which large, red-rimmed dark eyes looked at him with greedy interest.  Her mouth was a mere thin line, pale pink against her sun-darkened skin and her long hair, the color of dirty straw, hung limp and matted over her shoulders.  Her dress was nothing more than a shapeless piece of gray rag that fell from the neck to ankles offering no hint at the form it covered.  Only where it hugged the length of her long arms to be fastened at the wrists did it show her bone leanness. And the filthy hands below, curled around the gun she pointed at Edge, were just-skin-covered bones. She looked tired and weak, but her gun more than compensated for this at the distance she stood from Edge. It was one of the old Roland White Harmonica Rifles: a percussion repeater with a vertical sliding magazine.   A sporting gun, but as effective against a man as an animal.  And the woman held it like one not reluctant to use it. She stood beside a boulder behind which she had been concealed, lower down the slope from the point where Luke and Chuck had made their attack.  Edge guessed she had moved down during the fight.

“Like what you see?” he asked.

Her deep-set eyes fastened upon his face for several moments, then began to travel down, halted with a flicker of surprise at his chest before continuing down to his feet.  Then back to his chest.

“Why’d you say you had a hundred on your head?” she asked. 

Edge glanced down, saw the star still pinned to his shirt front.  He grinned, jerked a thumb at the bodies of Luke and Chuck.

“Didn’t want them to think they died trying for zero,” he answered. “Friends of yours?”

“I rode with them,” she said shortly.

“Which one you sleep with?”

She wasn’t insulted. “They took turns.”

“I don’t see you shedding tears.”

“Weeping women have no right in this part of the country,” she came back. “Will anybody cry for you if I shoot you?” 

Edge liked the word
if.
He thought fleetingly of Gail back in Peaceville, felt an odd kind of resentment that she would mourn him. She was a link with the past and he was a man for whom the past was a dead thing. It did not exist, so therefore must be dead-unless there were memories to keep it alive. The thought of Gail triggered off other recollections and Edge suddenly shut his mind to them.  Now was what mattered: this woman with this gun discussing his death.

“Nobody,” he answered.

She nodded, happy with his answer.  Perhaps feeling less alone because there was at least one other fellow human being on earth in similar circumstances. She raised the rifle and her finger whitened on the trigger as she drew a bead on the star. Edge prepared his muscles for a sideways leap, but suddenly the muzzle dropped and the rifle crack sent a bullet thudding into the ground between his spread feet.

“That’s to show I could have plugged you good,” she told him, holding the rifle in one hand, low at her side, offering no threat.

Edge holstered the Remington and moved slowly across to her, grinning.  Not until he stopped immediately in front of her, his head at the same height as her own, did she recognize the expression as a parody, see the viciousness shining in the eyes. As one of his hands ripped the rifle from her grasp the other moved as a blur, back and forth, knuckles and palm slapping with force into each of her cheeks.  She accepted the beating without flinching, her eyes dull, lips set in a firm line that barred any sound of pain.  Finally, Edge stopped, breathing deeply from the exertion, watching the bruises rise on her thin face.

“I met men like you before,” she said without emotion. “They done worse than that to me.”

Edge nodded, acknowledging his belief of her words. A beating was not a new experience for this woman.  Edge thought she had taken so many that she would miss them if they stopped.

“I get better as I go along,” Edge said wryly.

The woman shrugged her thin shoulders. “I’m a woman and I got the better of you, a man. You couldn’t let it rest. Where you headed, mister?”

The shot and the beating might never have happened.  The words were spoken in a conversational tone, as if they were strangers who had met accidentally and were passing the time of day.

“My business,” Edge replied.

“I got no money and only a few supplies,” she answered. “It’s a bad country for a woman alone.”

Edge spat, and reached up his hand again, gently this time.  His exploring fingers felt her scrawny neck, travelled down over her narrow shoulders, formed a cup over one small, hard breast, traversed the protrusions of her rib cage and halted on the taut flatness of her belly. She submitted tacitly to the assault of his hand. Like the beating, it was something she had been forced to accept many times before. Edge stepped back.

“I got delicate skin,” he said sardonically, “I could cut myself on you.”

It got no reaction.  “I got other uses,” she said.  “I cook good and whenever you get mad at anything, you can beat me. You were going south when Luke made his play. I’m heading for Mexico.”

“I travel light.”

“I won’t be no trouble.”  For the first time the woman revealed a positive emotion, her features forming a tacit plea. “Just to the next town.”

“What if there ain’t no man there so hard-up he’d take you in?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Go and get the horses,” Edge told her.  “Just the best two.”

She had been holding her breath for his decision, and let it out with a small gasp as she turned and started back up the slope, towards a craggy column of rock.  Edge went over to the dead horse, unfastened her girth and dragged off his saddle and bedroll. He dusted off the Henry and was reloading the Remington when the woman emerged from around the rock, started down the slope leading two stallions, a big bay and a smaller piebald. They were both saddled, but carried no bedrolls.