The town was almost silent, with nothing moving on the street, and everywhere in darkness except the Rocky Mountain Saloon, from whence came the only sounds. These were of conversation, pierced by occasional laughter, and the clink of bottle neck on glass rim. Edge’s footfalls on the wooden planking sounded like thunder and he spent a few moments removing his boots. Then he moved forward again, testing each step before he took it, searching for planks that creaked.
A sound down the street caused Edge to freeze and he peered down, saw a large white dog dart out of an alleyway, skid to a momentary halt and then run in a wide circle with a bark of joy. Edge saw the sheriff’s head swinging from its slavering jaws.
“Guess you just lost your head, sheriff,” Edge murmured as he stepped across the narrow gap that separated the hotel porch from that of the saloon.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE saloon had just two stories and, like the hotel next door had rooms facing the street with windows that opened out onto the porch way. There were four such windows, none of which showed light as Edge stood quietly, listening to the sounds from below. Although he could not distinguish the words being spoken, he could differentiate between the male and female voices and recognized the nasal twang of Forrest’s accent. He stood like that for perhaps a full minute and thought he heard two other men talking but could not make out who they were. Nor could he be sure that all of the men were still downstairs, two of them remaining silent, drinking or doing things with the saloon girls that required no conversation.
Then he moved and the first window he came to was open a crack at the bottom, enough for him to push his fingers under it and ease it upwards, an inch at a time, ready to stop at the first sound of a squeak. But it slid up smoothly and soundlessly and when Edge put his hand into the room he could hear even, regular breathing. He remained immobile at the window for several seconds, allowing his narrowed eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, until he could see the dresser and the wooden bed, the form of the sleeper rising and falling regularly with breathing upon it. He lowered the Henry in first, then his boots, finally threw a leg over the sill and climbed inside. A floorboard made a tiny sound as it took his full weight, did not disturb the figure on the bed.
He left his boot where they were, carried the rifle across the room. It was a woman in the bed, a large, ugly woman with a face streaked by run mascara, and enormous breasts that hung down on each side of her chest, made naked by the blanket which she had thrown back in her sleep. Edge assumed she was the madam of the establishment, taken to her bed when she discovered Forrest and his men were in no frame of mind to talk terms for the favors they sought.
Edge upholstered the Remington, raised it and brought it down with a swish of air. It thudded into the sleeping woman’s temple with a dull sound. She whimpered, her breathing missed a beat then became suddenly deep. Even in the darkness Edge saw the skin swell and begin to discolor. He went to the door and cracked it, put his eye to the opening to peer into the hallway. A candle flickered at each end, leaving a pool of darkness in the middle. Nothing moved except the two small flames, dancing in the draught he caused as he stepped out of the room and closed the door softly behind him. There were four doors on each side of the hallway, and the stairs at the end.
“You’re a cute little broad and make no mistake,” he heard Forrest say with a laugh, the words coming up the stairs and along the hallway with perfect clarity.
“And you’re the kind of man I like,” the object of his attention replied. Then she squalled. “Hey, that hurt.”
“But you still like me?”
“You bet.” Pained.
“I had enough to drink,” another man said. “Let’s go join Billy and the others.”
“Yeah,” agreed another. “This little girl’s got the hots for me and I don’t want to waste what’s left of the night.”
“You’re a naughty boy,” a girl said, her voice brittle. She sounded as coy as a mountain lion.
“Finish the bottle,” Forrest said, his voice making it an order. “Night or day, don’t make no difference. We screw these girls into the ground and then we get some more. Maybe from the cantina. I hear those Mex gals can keep it up twenty-four hours a day and still come back for more.”
“We ain’t no beginners,” one of the girls put in with irritation, but Edge was no longer listening. From what he had heard there were just two of Jamie’s murderers upstairs, Billy Seward and one other. It was all he needed to know for now.
The room next to the one he had entered by was empty, and so was the one next door, but when he stepped up to the next one across the hallway he heard sounds. There was a series of sighs, interspaced with grunts of pleasure and the occasional word of breathless endearment. With, in the background, the creaking of a bed that had provided support for too much lust and simulated passion in the past, protested noisily at this latest onslaught. Edge turned the handle, opened the door wide enough, slid inside the room and closed the door behind him in one silent, fluid movement.
Neither Scott nor the girl beneath him were shy, for a candle flickered at each side of the bed, one on the dresser, another on a broken backed chair. The girl was naked, the man dressed in filthy under-vest and pants, opened where it had proved necessary. The girl was staring up at the ceiling, her expression of disinterested acceptance belying the sighs and words of encouragement she whispered. Scott had his face buried in the crook of her shoulder, was breathing like an ancient horse sloughing the last furrow in a long day. He would not have been aware of it had a train thundered through the room but the girl was different and so Edge was careful to hold his silence as he crossed the room in long strides.
He stood for a moment at the foot of the bed, looking at Scott’s thrusting body move between the girl’s spread legs. Then, just as the girl sensed his presence, he leaned the Henry against the bed and sprung forward, withdrawing the razor from its pouch. The girl’s eyes grew wide, her mouth wider as she opened it to scream a warning. But Edge’s free hand, clenched in a white-knuckled fist, caught her on the point of the jaw and her mouth closed with a force sufficient to crunch her teeth together so that the tip of her tongue was hanging over the bottom lip, still attached by a mere sliver of skin.
Scott’s sigh of climax was curtailed into a grunt of pain as Edge’s full weight smashed on to his back. Then Edge rolled off him, on to his back on the bed beside the unconscious girl, dragging Scott bodily off her, across himself and thumping him on to the floor. As he looked up at his attacker surprise became horror and he prepared to shout for help. But the downswing of the razor ended and as he felt the cold edge of the blade below his left ear he killed the words.
“I’d like you to know it’s for Jamie,” Edge said and pressed down and across with the razor. The blade sank deep into the soft flesh and cut a course in a arc beneath the jaw, did not come free until it reached his right ear. Blood oozed out, ran down to start spreading a clean, scarlet stain across the grimed neckline of his under-vest. His dying sound was a sigh more sensuous than those which the girl had been pouring in his ear.
Edge looked down at his crotch, saw Scott had completed his final act in life. “You came out of one,” Edge murmured. “Guess it’s fitting you should die trying to get back into another.”
Then he swung his legs across the supine body of the dead man, stood and retrieved his rifle. He wiped the blood from the razor on a bed blanket and went to the door, first cracked it to peer outside before leaving the room. He found Billy Seward in the room directly across the hall. Exhausted and enjoying a drunken sleep, mouth open, completely naked body stretched across the length and width of the bed. His girl was in the corner of the room washing the area of her body where Seward had spent himself. She gasped when she saw Edge in the doorway but made no further sound when he raised a finger to his lips, and stepped inside. When he had closed the door against the sounds from downstairs he removed the finger from his lips and jerked it at the man on the bed.