EDGE IGNORED THE vacated chair and leaned his back against the wall nearby. Looked at the two hands of cards rather than the three men avidly interested in which would win the heap of money, but took the time to revise his opinion about them.
Close up, he saw they were not as elderly as he had thought at first impression: allowed he had probably made this inconsequential mistake because he had not been in the frame of mind to look at anything or anybody closely since he rode into this lumber town and at once began to think of it in terms of being one of the last places in the world where he would wish to finish up, end his drifting existence and put down roots.
‘Prentice Harper, sir.’
The man with a poker hand he thought could beat that of Vincent Mitchell introduced himself to Edge with the kind of smile that can sometimes be detected on the faces of predatory animals in skillfully-executed paintings. Close to sixty, he was growing old gracefully: his gray hair neatly cut and slicked down, his leanly handsome face newly shaved for the evening visit to the saloon, his blue eyes clear and bright, his fingernails clean and trimmed.
His outfit, the check shirt and denim pants of a working man, was far from new but it was clean and crisply cared for, like he had not undertaken any manual labor in the clothes for a long time. Maybe never. He smelled of a little too much pomade and talcum powder.
The half full glass of beer which stood between his hand of cards and his diminished pile of stake money was flat.
‘I’m Seymour Singer,’ the man on Harper’s right said without enthusiasm, but showed a brief broad smile with yellow dentures too large for his mouth.
He was closer to Edge’s age than to Harper’s. Taller and thinner than Harper by a head and fifty pounds, his face almost skeletal, with deep set eyes that were piercingly bright: dark in the dimly lamplit saloon. He was also freshly shaved, but was not clean shaven. Wore a strange set of whiskers which consisted of an inch-wide mustache that spanned the flare of his nostrils and a small pointed beard that sprouted from the center of his jaw. The whiskers looked to be dyed black, contrasting vividly with his fine head of hair that was brownish blond.
He wore a cream-colored suit that was store-bought, probably supplied by a country tailor: for although it was almost brand-new, the style was old-fashioned, like the design had been copied from an out-of-date mail order catalogue. Or maybe Seymour Singer just had quaint tastes in clothes.
‘Cecil Wyler,’ the third member of the trio greeted, his smile more spontaneous and so perhaps more genuine than the others. ‘And you are ... ?’
‘Edge.’ He tipped his hat to all three of them.
‘As in sharp or jagged or teeth on or—’
‘Over the,’ he interrupted the still-grinning Wyler. ‘Hope you fellers won’t try to put anything over on me?’
The short and fat, round-faced man decided to abandon for the moment his role as the comedian of the group: could not sustain his cheerful manner in face of the cold gaze from the half-breed’s narrowed, hooded eyes. He had not shaved for the evening on the town, had a day’s growth of black bristles that emphasized the shiny paleness of his bald skull in a horseshoe of gray hair. He was about the same age as Singer and also like Singer he had an empty shot glass alongside his small pile of stake money.
His rotund frame was clothed in pants that were too tight, a matching vest that was frayed and had two buttons missing, a grubby white shirt and an askew bow tie.
Edge thought that individually the men might appear to be harmless store clerks or office pen-pushers: maybe faithful husbands and doting fathers. But as a group, waiting with barely-controlled impatience for something extraordinary to happen, they emanated a strange kind of menace that warned they should not be taken for granted: they were much more dangerous than they might appear at first impression.
‘There’s no fear of that, Mr. Edge,’ Harper answered. He was plainly the dominant member of the group in every situation—not just when he held a hand of poker they were all convinced would win a rich pot plus whatever mysterious bonus Mitchell had gone to bring. ‘I’m sure we can all appreciate Mr. Mitchell’s concern. He’s a stranger to town, engaged in a card game with three good friends. There isn’t one of us at this table who would not take steps to protect his interests in some way were any of us in a similar situation.’ Edge thought Harper was using empty talk as a release for tension: maybe to keep himself from worrying that his cards might after all not be better than those of the absent man.
But Cecil Wyler had no such doubts, said: ‘Especially when there’s so much at stake!’
He licked his lips, as Mitchell had earlier. But whereas Mitchell had been nervously anxious, Wyler was pleasurably eager.
‘Shit, that don’t look like so much to me!’ Eddie sneered from the bar. He waved his glass and spilled some of its contents. ‘Even if there was another hundred in it, there wouldn’t be much more than a grand in the pot, looks like!
Why, up in Portland once, I saw a—’
‘Money isn’t everything, Mr. Noon,’ Harper interrupted, even toned, but with an irritated glint in his eyes.
‘Uh?’ Noon growled. He was drunkenly perplexed again, poised to be more contemptuous than ever.
‘It’s not what makes the world go round,’ Wyler said cryptically, smiling again.
Singer laughed at the secret joke.
‘What the hell, why all the—’ Noon started.
‘It’s love does that, isn’t that what they say?’ Wyler asked rhetorically. ‘And if Mitchell is as good as his word, Prentice’s hand is as good as he thinks it is, well—’
‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we?’ Harper cut in, and tilted his head to one side in a listening attitude.
Only Noon failed to see this and he made to demand an explanation. But he was signaled into silence by Calhern, who then used one of his big, soft hands to indicate the batwinged doorway of the saloon. Where everybody except for Edge was looking, all of them now hearing the approaching footfalls that had first captured Harper’s attention.
The three men at the corner table were clearly listening intently for something other than the mere footfalls that marked the return to the Golden Eagle of Vincent Mitchell.
‘It sounds to me like he don’t have—’ Singer started.
‘I said to wait and see!’ Harper rasped.
Edge looked sharply at him, for a moment glimpsed an expression that matched the harshness of his tone. Before Harper realized that he had revealed a side of himself he would have preferred to keep concealed in the present circumstances and quickly replaced the scowl with a smile, moderated his voice to add:
‘All will be revealed very soon now.’
‘We surely hope so!’ Wyler blurted. ‘If it’s as good as he claimed!’
He laughed, but cut it off short as all ears were cocked to listen with greater concentration than ever as the sound of the man’s approach became more pronounced, his footfalls rapping on a sidewalk now. And now, too, there were other sounds. Of other footfalls, much lighter in tread. And quicker, like those of a child who needed to almost run to keep up with a long legged, more heavily built man.
There was no sidewalk immediately out front of the Golden Eagle, and just the man’s footsteps were audible again on the hard-packed dirt of the street for a final few seconds. Then he halted and in the sudden silence all the eyes that were turned toward the doorway did not even blink.
The half-breed continued to look down at the two fans of cards at either side of the heap of money in the pot, but he could see the saloon entrance on the periphery of his vision.
A hand was hooked over the top of a batwing, pushed it part way open. It could have been any man’s hand, but it was definitely Vincent Mitchell’s not quite cultured voice which instructed:
‘All right, woman. In you go.’
Paul Calhern exclaimed: ‘Hot damn!’
‘Holy shit!’ Eddie Noon rasped.
Cecil Wyler and Seymour Singer just stared, seemingly dumbstruck with their mouths hanging open.
The only sign of emotion Prentice Harper showed was a moistening rather than a licking of his lips: his tongue twice darting out and recoiling fast, as if he were tasting the atmosphere. Like a lizard or snake sensing prey nearby.
Edge’s reaction was even less pronounced than this: a pursing of his thin lips.
‘Gentlemen, this is Ruby Red,’ Mitchell announced as he moved to stand alongside the half-breed he had ushered on to the threshold of the Golden Eagle. There was just a slight tremor in his tone.
‘Hot damn,’ Calhern muttered again.
Mitchell went on: ‘My collateral for the hundred dollar ante I must make for Mr. Harper to show.’
‘Holy shit!’ Noon repeated, but far less loudly than before. And he seemed suddenly to have sobered up as he turned fully around, leaned his back against the bar counter, to get himself a better view of the half white woman-half squaw across the dimly lamplit room.
Mitchell clearly enjoyed the effect triggered by the appearance of Ruby Red: smiled in satisfaction that it was at least as good as he had expected. Celebrated by angling a fat cigar from a side of his mouth, lighting it with a match struck on the door jamb.
The woman herself appeared totally unmoved by the startled attention focused upon her. She was not aloof, nor afraid, nor proud nor disgusted: did not respond in any way that a normal woman would in this situation, in Edge’s estimation.
Hell, she stood there like a prize animal! Displayed for sale before the arrogantly appraising gazes of potential purchasers. A fine-looking animal with the intelligence either to be supremely confident of its attractions, or simply knows from past experience it cannot do anything to prevent what is happening: so is dolefully resigned to whatever fate awaits.
Ruby Red certainly had attractions for the men who eyed her in the Golden Eagle Saloon this evening. She was about twenty five, just a couple of inches under six feet tall and maybe a little underweight for that height. But although she was slender, she was definitely a well-developed woman: this seen in the ample thrusts of her breasts temptingly contoured by the homespun fabric of a loose-fitting red shirt, and the prominent swell of her hips under a floral-patterned skirt held snug around her narrow waist by a broad belt. The skirt reached almost to her bare ankles above feet shod in moccasins.
So she was no small child and it was the close fit of the skirt around her long legs that had meant she needed to half run to keep pace with Mitchell out on the street.
Jammed on her head, as if in haste, was a low-crowned, floppy wide-brimmed hat from beneath which spilled long blonde hair that fell below her shoulders, dull and tangled from lack of brushing right then.
The hat and hair and buttoned-up shirt framed a face that was not beautiful, not lovely, nor pretty. No such conventional terms could be applied to this woman’s features. For her cheekbones were just a little too low, the nose a little too broad, the eyes too far apart, the mouth too wide and her chin too pointed to be conventionally attractive.
But neither was she in any way homely. Instead, the less than perfect features formed into a combination that exuded a brooding sexuality which was far more appealing to a man than mere skin-deep beauty.
Anyway, that was how Edge felt when he found his gaze held by that of the dark-colored eyes of Ruby Red: thought she looked at him for just a fraction of a second longer than at any of the other men. But he was prepared to allow that maybe this was only in his imagination, a wishful thought. Likewise the notion that her coldly impassive expression was relieved by a glimmer of warmth in that fleeting moment while their eyes met. When perhaps she recognized from something in his face that he was seeing her as a whole person. Albeit a woman he admired for her sexuality, but not solely as an object of lust.
None of which mattered, he acknowledged the next moment. For she was obviously a whore, or something very close to it, to submit without protest to such a degrading experience.
Then Vincent Mitchell stepped from between the batwings, which flapped close behind him as he removed the cigar from his mouth, said: ‘She has agreed to do what is required of her, Mr. Harper. To wit, should I lose the hand, Ruby Red will consent to go with you willingly. And I think you have to agree, sight largely unseen as it were, one hundred dollars is something of an under-valuation of what such a fine woman has to offer a man?’
‘When all is revealed, I bet that sure is right!’ Wyler murmured in breathless admiration, explaining his cryptic remark of a minute ago.
Singer swallowed hard, asked huskily: ‘She understands what’s meant by goin’ with Prentice? Not just for a—’
‘Damnit, no!’ Calhern protested, his small eyes shining with anger as saliva sprayed from between his fleshy lips.
‘What’d he say?’ Singer growled, unable to tear his gaze away from the woman as he got ready to be just as mad as the saloon keeper if Calhern did anything to prevent the wager taking place.
‘What is your objection, Calhern?’ Harper asked. ‘The young lady is quite clearly a willing participant?’
Calhern dragged his bug-eyed gaze away from Ruby Red, wiped the back of a hand across his mouth, said huskily: ‘You gents ain’t been in town too long. But you saw my wife before she left. Peg ain’t never allowed no loose women in our place. She ain’t that kind. And just because she’s away in Medford visitin’ her—’
‘Mr. Calhern, Ruby Red is no whore!’ Mitchell broke in indignantly.
He curled an arm around the woman’s shoulders while she continued to gaze directly ahead, did not respond to what he said nor to his touch as he went on:
‘She is I suppose what one could term my common law wife. And, like any good wife, she has agreed to obey the wishes of her husband.’
‘And if we happen to—’ Wyler started excitedly.
Harper cleared his throat noisily to call attention to the man’s slip of the tongue over the pronoun, glared at him.
‘If Prentice should happen to win the game, Calhern,’ the short fat man went on, almost slavering as he ran his gaze up and down the woman who stood so sensually submissively on the threshold, ‘it won’t be in the Golden Eagle that—’
Eddie Noon cut in on the eager Wyler: ‘Shit, if I was you guys, I wouldn’t go along with the bet!’
There was a brand of viciousness in his tone that captured all attention. Even the woman looked at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes that burned into his face like she could read what he was about to say from his tone. Thought she could force the words back down his throat with the intense power of her stare.
‘She’s just a Goddamn half-breed,’ the scowling Noon went on, thumbs hooked over the ornate buckle of his belt. ‘That ain’t worth no hundred bucks, seems to me. Fifty tops, I figure. For the white in her.’
Having caught his drift, the fire went out of Ruby Red before he was through and she reverted to her unblinking gaze into the middle distance.
Which surprised nobody. While all of them might have been intrigued to see that Edge did react to the sneered insult: narrowed his eyes to the merest slivers of glinting ice blue as his body stiffened.
‘Quit that kinda talk, Noon!’ Calhern snapped. ‘I’ll have no bigotry in my place. Same as I won’t have immorality. I still can’t be sure if I oughta allow this kind of crazy gamblin’ in the Golden Eagle. It sticks in my craw, a man bettin’ a woman on a hand of cards. And I’m damn sure Peg wouldn’t—’
‘So why don’t we go out on the street and finish the damn game, Prentice?’ Singer growled and made to rise from his chair.
But he sat down hard again as Edge reached across him and he thought the half-breed was intent on preventing him from doing what he wanted. Then the man with the oversize false teeth expressed sheepishness in the wake of fear when the half-breed asked evenly:
‘Pardon me, feller.’
He reached into the money in the pot on the center of the table and extracted two five dollar bills. Which he then held up, displaying the money first to Harper and then Mitchell, said: ‘My fee, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Calhern echoed as the two men directly involved in the poker showdown curtly nodded their agreement to what Edge had done and said.
Then the uneasy saloon keeper amplified his assent that the game could be played to its end on his premises. ‘Just finish up and then get the hell out of here.’
From the way he started to sweat, the thickness of his voice and the light in his constantly blinking eyes, it was plain that Calhern was getting a sexual thrill out of witnessing the betting of a woman’s favors against the showing of a poker hand.
‘I appreciate that, Mr. Calhern,’ Harper said, and now his voice was a little husky as he beckoned for Mitchell to approach the table.
‘Me, too,’ Mitchell said, replaced the cigar between his teeth and steered Ruby Red toward the table. He spoke around the cigar then. ‘It won’t take long. And as I’ve maintained from the outset, I’m confident I will carry the day, and so the question of immorality is academic. Wait there, my dear.’
Edge pushed the ten dollars into a hip pocket and moved away from the wall.
Mitchell nodded to him and resumed his seat, waving that the woman should stand beside his chair. Then he looked long and hard at the fan of cards on the table before him, like he had memorized the precise position of each of them, was satisfying himself they had not been moved by a fraction of an inch.
Not until Edge had moved far enough away from the table so he could not glimpse the faces of the cards did Mitchell pick them up. He closed them into a stack, then opened them out into another, narrower fan in both hands. And a mixture of relief and pleasure melded on his features before he nodded to the man across the table from him, motioned with his head toward the woman, stated his bet:
‘Ruby Red to see what you hold, Mr. Harper.’
They were all full-blooded male animals of the human species who waited and watched to learn the fate of the lone female of their kind. None was immune to the atmosphere of blatant lust with an undercurrent of violence that existed within the quiet, dimly-lit saloon. Even Mitchell, who was totally confident the woman would remain his property, found her familiar face and form arousing in this highly charged situation.
But he did not look at her after he made the bet, though. Chose not to watch her standing as statue-like as ever while men directed their lascivious gazes at her and drew not the slightest reaction from her: by word, expression or even a tremor within her tall, lean, lithe body.
Then, one at a time, Harper lifted and turned over the cards of his hand. And the attention of the men not directly engaged in the showdown began to switch constantly between the tabletop and the woman.
While Harper shifted his gaze back and forth between the woman and Mitchell, for he had memorized the order and value of the cards in his hand, named them correctly in sequence as he turned them face up, without need to see them.
‘Ace of Hearts ... Ace of Diamonds ... Ace of Clubs.’
When he started, his face had been empty of expression. But then he showed the quietest of smiles as he watched the woman exclusively, raking his gaze from the top of her hatted head to her moccasined feet. And all the while his tongue darted out and back again, the look in his eyes suggesting that he could actually taste the flavor of her flesh rather than just the air now.
Edge thought that at last Ruby Red was reacting to the tension of her situation: had begun to breathe a little faster, a little more deeply. Or maybe, he allowed, this was in his imagination again. As he found his glittering-eyed gaze fixed upon the rise and fall of her breasts within the shirt. It could be her breathing and the way it moved her upper body had always been this pronounced.
Vincent Mitchell began to smile around the cigar as one, then another and a third ace was lifted, turned over and named. He remained certain he had the winning hand as he estimated the value of Harper’s still unseen cards. Became increasingly convinced the other man’s hand was not strong enough to win the pot and the compliant body of Ruby Red. And finally he could not contain his gambler’s excitement any longer, blurted:
‘Even if you got two kings, sir, your top full house will not beat—’
‘Ace of Spades,’ Harper broke in, and the smile of pleasurable anticipation he had been directing at the woman became a leer which did not alter as he turned his head to look across the table at Mitchell. Then, by a just discernible twist of his mouthline and a narrowing of his blue eyes he showed an expression that conveyed almost childish glee at winning for winning’s sake, no matter what the prize.
This while Mitchell’s face underwent a radical change of shape: from excitement to devastation as the cigar dropped out of his fallen open mouth, bounced off the table and hit the floor in a shower of glowing tobacco embers.
‘ ... my four tens,’ he completed in a lame, barely audible voice.
‘Son-of-one-hell-of-a-friggin’-bitch!’ Noon muttered hoarsely.
‘All of us make mistakes,’ Harper said to Mitchell. ‘There aren’t too many hands can beat what you have, but—’
‘You don’t have to tell me about poker!’ Mitchell rasped in a voice that sounded like a hand was clutched around his throat.
Once they had seen Harper turn over a seven of hearts and Mitchell let his cards fall face up to reveal he had a jack with his four tens, everyone else had returned their eyes to the woman.
Perhaps some of them saw, like Edge, a slight smile of triumph cross her face in the blinking of an eye. But Mitchell did not see this smile that was directed at him, discreetly releasing her feelings at the way his over-confidence had been destroyed by the turning over of that final ace. Like Ruby Red had seen him only ever triumph in similar situations, none of which had ever resulted in anything good for her.
Or maybe she had always hated his guts in every situation: simply got pleasure from seeing him cut down to size, humiliated as he had humiliated her. Or maybe she relished the prospect of leaving him, no matter what was in store for her with Harper and his two partners. Maybe ...
Or maybe it was none of his business, Edge rebuked himself, swung away from the table and went toward the bar as he delved a hand into a shirt pocket for the makings. Ruby Red was nothing to him, so he had no reason to be concerned with why she did anything: be it smiling a secret smile at a man’s mortification or condoning the humiliating indignity of allowing herself to pass from one man to another as a bet in a poker game.
‘Hell of a thing, uh?’ Calhern asked Edge, and ran a hand across his saliva-wet mouth again. Then jutted out his lower lip to blow a cooling stream of air up over his sweat-beaded face. Struggling to overcome his sexual arousal.
‘Yeah,’ the half-breed agreed. ‘I’ll take a shot of rye, feller?’
‘Sure thing.’ Calhern took down a bottle off a shelf, reached a glass out from under the bar counter and put them both on top.
‘Reckon I’ll have another,’ Noon said as Calhern uncorked the bottle. He pulled a face, shook his head, complained: ‘Suddenly it don’t feel like I’ve hardly had a drink yet tonight.’
‘You’ve had three bucks’-worth, which includes this one, Eddie,’ the saloon keeper told him as he first filled Edge’s fresh glass, then the frequently used one of the younger man.
There was some low-toned talk at the table where Harper was gathering in the money from the pot and Singer and Wyler put away what was left of their stakes. While the woman continued to stand with her feet together, her arms at her sides, head held to peer straight in front of her. And Mitchell sat slumped in his chair, hands cupped at either side of the five cards that had lost him money and Ruby Red.
‘I ain’t gonna give you no argument on what I owe,’ Noon growled. He threw back the whiskey in one, banged the glass down for a refill. ‘Just so you realize I ain’t really gettin’ no more liquored-up than usual on a Saturday night, okay?’
Calhern shrugged his wide shoulders, answered evenly: ‘Sellin’ liquor is my business, like I told you awhile back. And I’ll keep sellin’ it to anyone so long as they don’t make trouble in my place.’
He started out looking between Noon and Edge, but when he made mention of trouble his attention was once again drawn to the table where trouble had simmered ever since Mitchell made his then secret deal with the other three men.
And now trouble came a long step closer.
‘No, it’s just not possible!’
Mitchell’s protest was violently accompanied by the crash of his chair tipping over backwards with the force of the abrupt rise to his feet.
‘Oh, no,’ Calhern groaned, his fleshy face more doleful looking than ever.
Noon whirled.
Edge, in process of rolling a cigarette, turned more slowly to look toward the four men and one woman at the table, cleared now of money, but still littered with cards. They were locked in a frozen tableau for a stretched second, all of them as unmoving as Ruby Red had been while she awaited her fate which depended on the whims of a poker game.
Then she was the first to move, backed away a pace and turned her head to peer at Edge. And now there was definitely a look in her dark eyes especially for him—a pleading for him to help.
Beyond her, Vincent Mitchell stood erect, right hand inside his suit jacket, under the left lapel. Cecil Wyler was also up on his feet, but his flabby body was awkwardly curved in an attitude that looked uncomfortable. But he held it from fear of what it was that Mitchell was going to jerk out from under his suit jacket. The two men who remained seated expressed a lesser degree of trepidation.
‘I think ...’ Harper started.
‘I’ve been cheated!’ Mitchell snarled, and sprang his right hand into sight, fisted around the butt of a .31 caliber Remington-Rider revolver. A small gun with a three-inch barrel that weighed less than threequarters of a pound complete with its five shells. From the way Mitchell backed off, increasing the range but giving himself a better field of fire over the entire saloon, the Remington was fully loaded and he was confident he could hit whoever he fired at if circumstances made it necessary to use the small gun.
Ruby Red spoke for the first time in a voice that did not betray a trace of any accent that came from the Indian side of her heritage: ‘Vinny, don’t be such a—’
‘Shut up, woman!’ he barked. ‘Just do what I tell you. Like always.’
‘You’re making an even bigger mistake this time, Mitchell,’ Harper warned, quickly recovered from surprise. He signaled with a wave of his hand for Wyler to sit down.
‘Don’t think he won’t carry through any threat he makes,’ Ruby Red warned grimly.
‘Damn right!’ Mitchell confirmed. ‘I’ll kill any man who tries to stop me getting back what was stolen from me.’
‘Nobody stole anything from—’ Singer made to protest.
‘There had to be some cheating!’ Mitchell broke in. Like before, with Ruby Red and Prentice Harper, he swung his angry gaze and the muzzle of the gun toward the speaker. ‘My hand was just like I left it. But I figure Harper switched his while I was gone to bring Ruby—’
‘No, mister, that ain’t necessary!’
It was Paul Calhern who blurted this and captured all attention. But just for a moment, before all eyes focused on Edge. Who had finished rolling his cigarette, hung it at the side of his mouth, turned to face Mitchell: his hand dropped down from his face to hover, slightly curved, close to his holstered Colt.
Ruby Red vented a gasp of shock and took another backward step. Made sure she was clear of the line of fire between Mitchell and Edge.
Mitchell was unable to move a muscle after he turned his head to see Edge, saw the look on the half-breed’s face, heard the tone of his voice when he warned:
‘You swing that gun to aim it at me, I’ll kill you. On account of I don’t like to have guns aimed at me. Especially it irritates me after I’ve given the warning.’
‘Mister, please don’t involve yourself in—’ Ruby Red attempted to implore.
‘I’m not through yet, lady,’ Edge told her without shifting his unblinking gaze away from Mitchell. ‘You also have to know, I’ll kill you if you don’t take back what you just said about me cheating you, feller.’
Mitchell swallowed hard, croaked: ‘I never accused you! I said it to Harper. I guess he was able to do it without you—’
A gunshot rang out. And Edge slapped his hand instinctively to the jutting butt of the Frontier Colt. Fisted it tight, then froze with the revolver only halfway out of the holster as he saw the blood on Mitchell’s face, spilling down from a hole in the center of his forehead.
Then he saw the shot had been fired by a gun in the fist of Prentice Harper, the heel of the man’s hand wrapped around the butt of the derringer resting on the tabletop, barrel angled up to draw a bead on the head of the man standing across from him.
A moment later Mitchell was not standing there. He died on his feet and staggered backwards, gun hand dropping to his side, revolver slipping from his lifeless grip as he tripped on his overturned chair and collapsed into an ungainly heap, belly arched obscenely upwards, across it.
‘Holy shit!’ Eddie Noon exclaimed for the third time.
‘Oh my God, there’s been a killin’ in the Golden Eagle,’ Calhern gasped.
Edge said evenly: ‘You want to give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you?’
All gazes swiveled fast toward him, like nobody could be sure who it was he addressed the question to. And they found him looking at Harper, who now had no gun in either of the hands he splayed on the tabletop. It had been spirited away as deftly as it had been conjured up, seemingly out of nowhere, a few seconds earlier.
Harper darted his tongue out and back in, inclined his head, answered in a conversational tone with just a slight sign of strain on his handsome face: ‘Item, Mr. Edge, I’m not aiming a weapon at you. Item, although I understand your point of view, it was I Mitchell accused of being a cheat. By implication, he considered you no more than a conspirator. Item, I therefore considered it was my honor that was called into more serious question.’
Behind his impassive outer shell Edge felt rage still burning almost painfully inside him as he listened to the soft-spoken words of Prentice Harper. He also had the impression of eyes boring into him with palpable force as everyone waited fearfully for his response.
Then he was able to control the emotion, confine it into an ice cold ball at the pit of his stomach: and thus the urge to kill a man who had used him as a distraction so that he could kill another was suddenly gone. But he still harbored a compelling need to unleash his frustration against something or somebody.
Which did not show as he thrust the Colt all the way back into the holster: an action that drew audible sighs of relief from Calhern, Wyler and Ruby Red. While Singer continued to show unease and Harper expressed a just discernible smile.
‘And all of this because of some lousy half-breed!’ Eddie Noon said, giggled, banged his empty glass down on the counter top to reveal this first drink after the end of the tense game and then the shooting had made him drunk again. ‘I’ll have another, bartender!’
‘Nobody gets any more drinks until I’ve got the corpse out of my place!’ Calhern snarled.
Edge figured enough cooling down time had elapsed for him to be sure he was going to do the right thing to relieve his feelings without causing some damage that might land him in serious trouble in this town.
He turned slowly toward Eddie Noon, was in process of altering his grin into a scowl at what Calhern had said. Then he speeded the turn into a whirl, brought up his right hand fisted more tightly than it had been around the butt of the revolver. Slammed it into Noon’s jaw with enough force to power the drunk up off his feet, on to the bar, slither him along it and off the far end: where he crashed to the floor with his own and Edge’s glass shattered beneath him.
After a stretched second of silence, Calhern asked in an incredulous tone: ‘Why’d you do that to him, mister?’
‘I’m as much of a half-breed as the lady, feller,’ Edge replied around the cigarette still angled from the side of his mouth. ‘He sounded off about the kind of people we are and I didn’t like it. I’ll cover the cost of the damage. Plus what I owe for the food and drink.’
Calhern vented a sound that was like a laugh that he tried to control because the circumstances made good humor inappropriate. Then he shook his head, told Edge resolutely: ‘Oh no you won’t, mister.’
‘I always pay my way,’ Edge replied flatly, and drew one of the newly-earned five spots out of his pocket, placed it on the bar top.
Calhern looked like he was about to argue the point, then shrugged, made change from a pocket in the front of his apron, said: ‘Okay, if that’s the way you want it. But only for the chow and the beer and the shot of liquor, mister.’
He directed a look of malevolent enjoyment toward the unconscious man at the far end of the counter. ‘I’ve waited a long time to see that tough-talkin’ bastard cut down to his right size. About the only thing I’ve got a laugh out of tonight. Seein’ Noon take off and zoom along the counter and—’
‘Yeah, feller, it’s what happens when you’re having fun,’ Edge broke in.
‘Uh?’
The half-breed made a sideways motion with his hand above the counter as he turned away from it, replied: ‘Time flies.’