Edge 48 School for Slaughter by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: NEL
Published: 2017-09-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

JUST A handful of Loganville's citizens were still out on the town's two streets to see the running and perhaps crying woman reach the intersection and turn the corner. None of them showed more than fleeting interest in the distraught Patsy Blair after realizing who she was; they simply continued on their way to the Cottonwood Saloon, in haste themselves, but not running. Some of them looked surreptitiously in every direction, as if they felt there was something wrong about what they were doing and were wary of being seen by reproachful eyes.

By the time Edge reached the intersection he was the only figure on either Main Street or River Road. Many men and women, familiar and unfamiliar to him, hurried on by as he had ambled along the western stretch of Main, some of them obviously aware of what was to take place in the saloon. Nobody was turned away from the batwinged entrance, and soon aromatic tobacco smoke, the rise and fall of conversation, and the occasional clink of glass on glass emanated from the Cottonwood—the kind of noises that emanate from a well-patronized saloon in any quiet town where there was little else in the way of entertainment.

"Hey, mister!" Gideon Doyle called from out of his cell. "You saw Sheriff Morrow down the street, I guess?"

"Yeah, feller," Edge answered, not failing to note that the Negro spoke of the lawman with greater respect now.

"Don't guess he made any mention of stoppin' by this place and turnin' me loose now that I almost served, my time?" Doyle sounded heavy-hearted, this false front of high spirits gone.

In the saloon, somebody banged something heavy against a hard surface and the muted babble of voices was silenced so that of Sam Dyer could be heard.

"All right now. You all know me and you know I ain't used to standin' up in front of this many people and speakin' my mind. But my little Emily ain't never been in the clutches of no cornered killers before."

"Sam, I don't reckon you oughta—" a woman started to entreat. And before another burst of hammering— maybe a revolver butt on a tabletop—silenced her, Edge recognized the voice of Clara Wade, who had taken his order at the grocery store.

The half-breed was at this time three-quarters of the way across the intersection toward the law office and jailhouse. In the wake of the hammering, another familiar voice came out of the saloon amid the drifting tobacco smoke.

"This ain't no debate around the cracker barrel in Mr. Wade's grocery, Mrs. Wade! My brother's dead. So's Mr. Bass and maybe old man Kyne is by now. And there's those four kids and the schoolteacher—"

"All right, Potts," Dyer said as the voice of the ranch hand began to crack. "And let's not forget those three killers also shot down Leroy Albertson and the two ladies who worked for him at the bank. All right, like the man says, this ain't gonna be no tossin'-ideas-back-and-forth type of meetin'. And

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