“There,” she said when she had finished. “You won’t be shooting anybody with that hand for some time to come.”
He grinned coldly. “I’m two-handed with guns, lady,” he said. “Or any weapon.”
The young man who stood to the left of the room door, holding a revolver in his hand as if he was not sure what it was shuffled his feet uncomfortably as he heard Edge’s words. Edge had heard Honey give the kid his instructions, telling him to watch the stranger, prevent him from reaching Forrest before the citizens could make the final kill for themselves. He had accepted the duty with pride and enthusiasm which had waned steadily as the results of Edge’s violence had come to light in the rooms above the saloon. He was just a kid who thought himself a man. With each soft word that Edge spoke he grew younger and more vulnerable. He was glad the waitress from the restaurant was in the room with him and Edge. She seemed able to keep him in line.
She came up from stooping over her patient, rubbing the small of her back where it ached from holding the same position too long. “You must have had a powerfully strong reason for wanting to kill those men,” she said, and carried the bloodied bowl of water over to the dresser.
“Five hundred of them,” Edge answered.
Gail shook her head. “Stronger than money. I think you took the reward under false pretences. You were going to kill them anyway.”
Edge shrugged. “Thinking is free.”
“One of them called you Captain.”
“I ain’t ever liked answering questions, lady,” he told her, his expression as hard as granite.
She pouted. “A man’s business is his own, unless he wants somebody else to know it.”
“I don’t.”
“Frank Forrest is the town’s business,” she came back. “I told you earlier we had a lot of respect for Sheriff Peacock. And we want Peaceville to be a clean, decent town. If there was any doubt who killed the sheriff we’d hold a vigilante trial and dispense justice the way we see fit. But Forrest and his men killed the sheriff before the whole town so he’ll hang.”
Edge listened dispassionately. “Then the town ain’t so decent,” he said softly. “It’s robbing me of something.”
An expression of distaste flitted across the woman’s beautiful face. “They’ll probably let you keep the full five hundred.”
“I aim to,” he answered. “But I’m not talking about money. That doesn’t matter a damn in relation to the other.”
Gail looked at him closely, a confused look upon her features, “You ...” she started and then stopped.
“Yeah?”
“You can speak like an educated man when you want to and yet most of the time you ...”
Edge stood up, suddenly angry, and the kid near the door brought up the gun, cocking it. Edge knew that when the chips were down, he’d know what to do and he’d do it quickly.
“I ain’t no first grade drop-out,” Edge snarled at Gail. “I already warned you about prying into my affairs.”
“They must have done something very evil to make you the way you are,” she replied with gentleness, refusing to be provoked by his anger.
Edge turned his back on her and went to the window, threw it open, admitting the cold of the early hours, drawing it into his lungs in great gulps. The gray light of a false dawn was already streaking the sky, dimming the stars and giving the town the substance of solid wood and adobe out of the shadows from which it was formed during the night. Edge leaned out to look back down towards the intersection of streets and watched for awhile the activity taking place there. A dozen men were working in the center of the two streets, measuring, sawing and nailing. They had been engaged on their task for less than a hour and yet already the construction was taking the shape of a gallows.
“Ain’t you ever hanged anybody in Peaceville before?” he asked without looking back into the room.
“There’s some trees outside of town,” the kid replied to Edge’s impassive back.
“They were lynchings,” Gail put in with repugnance. “This is going to be done correctly.”
Edge withdrew his head, closed the window and went back to the bed, stretched out full length on it. His hat was on the floor below and he picked it up, set it upon his forehead so that it covered his face except for the stubble jaw line.
“Wake me up before sunrise,” he said from underneath the brim. “I wouldn’t want to miss the show.”
No-one answered him and within a few minutes he was breathing deeply and evenly, like a man in a sound sleep.
“Christ that’s a relief,” the kid said with a sigh. “I don’t mind admitting it, Miss Gail. That feller makes me nervous by just looking at me. D’you see what he did to those people in the saloon?”
“They told me,” Gail answered, looking at Edge with an odd mixture of concern and disgust in her dark eyes. “I suppose he did what he felt he had to do. He has his own values and nobody in Peaceville can in any honesty despise him for what he did. We paid him for doing our dirty work and we didn’t make any conditions.” Her voice was tinged with sadness. Then she sighed and moved to the door. “He seems harmless enough now, Jesse,” she said. “I think that’s the first time he’s had any real rest in ages. But keep an eye on him. Honey will send up somebody to help you take Edge out if he really does want to see the hanging.”
“Right, Miss Gail,” the kid said with the confidence of Edge’s sleep as he opened the door, then closed it again when the woman had left the room.
But Edge was not asleep. He had kept his breathing deep and evenly paced by a conscious effort as he listened to the conversation, quelling his impatience as the seconds ticked away and the voices droned on. He knew he could handle both the woman and the kid. But he would have to take the kid first, to disarm him, and while he was doing that the woman would have enough time to raise a ruckus loud enough to wake the whole town. There was no point to that, if it could be done quietly without trouble. So Edge curbed his itch for action until the woman had gone out.
The kid was nervous, and that was bad. A brave man might think he could handle Edge alone and could be pushed into making a mistake. The kid would either shout for help or, worse, start blasting at the first flicker of trouble. So Edge had to wait for him to make the first move. It wasn’t a long wait. He had been standing by the door for a considerable time and at first the monotony of sentry duty had been counteracted by watching the woman at her nursing, then by conversation. Alone, except for the apparently sleeping man the boredom set in. The sounds of building across the street reached the room, faint but without competition, sufficient to catch his interest.
He tiptoed across the room, keeping his eyes and the gun trained upon the bed, holding his breath and clamping his teeth on to his lower lip with each tiny sound of his movement. Edge followed his progress with ease, grinned into the darkness of the hat when he heard the faint swish of the window rising, the sounds from outside suddenly amplified. Edge counted the beat of his own breathing, got to ten and reached up to raise the hat, swiveling his eyes to look at the window. He saw the kid’s rump folded over the sill, the slope his back angled out into the gray of dawn as he craned forward for a better view of the activity that held his attention.
Careful to keep his breathing pitched at the same regular beat, Edge sat up, put on his hat and turned his body so he could throw his legs off the bed. He held the pose for a second, waiting for the kid to sense trouble and swing the gun onto a target. The kid stayed as still as Edge.
Edge’s mouth cracked open and his teeth gleamed in contest with the glint of his narrowed eyes. Winter north of the Artic Circle had never been so cold as the expression. His boots were still in the room above the saloon, and his stockinged feet moved soundlessly across the floorboards. He had not spent much time in the room, but he was well aware of those sections on the floor that creaked. He avoided them.