Edge: Ten Grand

Edge sighed. “You’re right.”

“What?”

“I’m going to beat you again.”

He had not moved his eyes off the patch of shadow where the men had taken refuge, saw movement now as one of them edged forward, going back towards the cleft where the horses now held their silence. He saw a glint of silver, high up. When the second man joined the first, a stray moonbeam produced the same effect. 

“Somebody fingered me,” Edge muttered.

“What?” Amy asked.

“Those guys are marshals,” he answered absently. “Wearing their tin on their hats.”

“You ain’t the law then?”

“Not any more I ain’t,” he told her, and ripped the badge from his shirt, pressed it into her hand. “Here, have a souvenir.”

“Thanks a bunch.” She sneered.  “I’ll treasure it and your memory ‘til my dying day.”

“Maybe your day has come,” he said and squeezed the Henry’s trigger.

The bullet spat chips from it rock close to the first marshal’s face and he went into a crouch as his partner dived for the ground.

“Who’s up there?” a voice called.

“Santa Claus come early this year,” Edge answered.    “Figure you won’t be around come Christmas.”

“Funny,” Amy said drily.

“Shut up,” Edge told her.

“We’re US territorial marshals,” the spokesman from below called. “Your name Edge?”

“Close enough.”

“Throw down your gun and surrender,” came the response.  “We got a warrant for you. You’ll get a fair trial.  You’ll have a better chance with us than with the bounty hunters.”

“You pass a couple of guys up north aways?” Edge asked.

There was a pause. “You?”

“I ain’t admitting nothing, but they didn’t die of pneumonia.”

“You kill me,” Amy said.

“How long you been telling fortunes?” he hissed from the side of his mouth.

Amy glanced at him, huddled beneath the blanket and refrained from further comment. His bitter humor was a mere surface veneer, a transparent cover for the brutal killer beneath. 

“Give yourself up, Edge?” the marshal shouted.

Edge’s answer was another rifle shot that drew a grunt of pain from below as it nicked skin from a creased brow.  But the minor wound did not interfere with the man’s aim as a hail of bullets whistled upwards, chipping rock from above and below the shelf, causing Edge to draw back, the woman to roll herself into a ball. When the fusillade of firing died and Edge chanced a glance down he could no longer catch a glimpse of the lawmen. They had fired on the run, going for more secure places of concealment.  A rifle cracked once and a flash from the cleft showed where it came from as Edge ducked back.

He decided they had split up and that he would not see or hear from one of them until he was in a position to make a kill. Edge looked to his left and right, saw that the shelf upon which he and the woman were crouched narrowed away to nothing in one direction, continued flat and broad in the other.  He looked up and saw a sheer face. Over to his right the incline got less steep, became potted with indentations, was host to some thick clumps of brush. Below, the marshal in the cleft opened up again and a hail of bullets forced Edge to interrupt his surveillance, draw back to the rear of the protective shelf.  When the marshal had emptied his gun, took time to reload, Edge glanced to his right again, saw the second lawman running at a crouch up the slope, duck behind some brush.

“I ain’t been smart,” he muttered. 

“We trapped?” the woman asked.

“They know their jobs,” he admitted grudgingly.

“I ain’t wanted by the law,” she said.

“I’m fresh out of sympathy,” Edge told her and pressed the Remington into her hand, not taking his eyes off the brush where the marshal was hiding.  “When I give the signal, pour lead down on to that guy below. Don’t stop until the gun’s empty.”

“I don’t want to shoot no lawman,” she told Edge. 

“They die as easy as anybody else,” he said, and dug his elbow into her skinny side. “Now.”

She opened up without aiming, just pushing the gun over the edge of the shelf and firing. Up on the right the second marshal mistook the first few shots for covering fire and came clear of the brush, took three fast paces out into the open towards a cluster of rocks before he saw the flashes coming from the wrong place.

He didn’t live to learn by his error. He fired on the turn, his bullet whining low along the shelf, ricocheting, tugging at Edge’s blanket, spraying rock chippings into his face. Edge fired three times before the marshal had completed his turnabout. The first bullet plowed a deep furrow across his chest, the second took him in the ear and the third went into his back, lodged in his lungs and sent him sprawling in death towards the brush he had so desired in life.

Silence was a heavy weight settling on the gully, pressing against the ears and intensifying the coldness.

“Ned?” the marshal below shouted, the name coated with concern. “You okay, Ned?”

“I’m dead,” Edge whispered, pressing his lips against the woman’s ear. “You tell him that. You say you’re innocent and tell him to hold his fire.”

“I don’t know if ...”