“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.