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accused caustically.
    For stretched seconds just a soft sobbing from the kneeling woman who had assisted Childs in his medical practise and the hiss of steadily falling rain disturbed the melancholy silence that gripped the group of shocked people. Then there was a surge of talk that the lawman sought to quell as Edge moved off up the street, beyond a vacant lot, a hardware store and a meat market to the double fronted premises of Quinn and Son. He let himself in through a glass panelled door under the newly painted sign, locked it and went across the store that was still stocked as a haberdashery and into the living quarters out back without need to light a lamp. For after two days of living here he well knew the layout of the place. Then he lit a kerosene lamp in the small, ill-furnished parlour, took off his damp top clothing and his gunbelt and squatted before the stove to stir flames from the dying embers.
    Recalled with a grimace that in those two days he had convinced himself he had no desire to remain in Eternity for longer than he had to: as a store owner or anything else. It was not much of a town and when he got off the train Sunday he was surprised that such an intelligent, go-getting businessman as Nicholas Quinn had wanted to open a branch of his high class tailoring chain in a place like this. But during the time he had been here, with a prominent FOR SALE sign on the door, he had been told how Eternity’s leading citizens had once nurtured high ambitions for their community.
    Several years ago all had looked set for the recently established settlement to develop into a boomtown. Back then, just after the end of the War Between the States, the 24
    hearts and minds of local people were filled with enthusiastic dreams. And everyone was convinced the town could be much more than a cluster of houses, a church, a handful of stores, a saloon, a railroad depot and the stockyards: the business enterprises then only fully utilised once a year when the Texas herds were driven north for shipment east. They constructed the large hotel, the Washington Memorial Theatre, more stores to supply a greater range of merchandise and a larger railroad station that was planned as the junction for a spur line to run up to Wyoming. And houses were built for those settlers who came to Eternity on their westward trek and decided to remain here. To farm the surrounding well-watered prairie, or to work at the slaughterhouse and canning plant that was envisaged.
    But the grandiose scheme did not materialise.
    People heading westward by way of Eternity were not persuaded to stay. And as time went by, the town’s attractions became less alluring even to the local population as decay from neglect took a hold on the community. Eternity became too large for the number of people living there and as much property was left empty to deteriorate as was occupied by people who lacked civic pride and were mostly little interested in the future of their town.
    Edge heard of Eternity’s ambitious beginnings and people’s faded dreams from Roy Sims, the first owner of the store. Who had run it as a haberdashery from the days when hopes were high and he made a good living for a single man in his line of business in a country town over fifty miles from the nearest competition. But he was getting on in years, eager to retire and receptive to a reasonable offer from Nicholas Quinn when the clothing entrepreneur came through the mid-West looking to expand the chain of establishments he inherited from his father.
    Quinn purchased the business on the understanding that Sims continued to run the place until another manager could be employed and some new stock shipped in. But the old man was still there at the time Quinn blew out his brains in the Texas town undertaking parlour where the bodies of his murdered wife and daughter were still awaiting burial. When Edge showed up Sunday afternoon, Sims had reluctantly consented to run the store for a further month at