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the lady started to feel ill during the play and they left to get her a brandy at the saloon. They headed for home instead of back to the theatre when she felt better.’
    Flynt pondered this for a few moments, then asked: ‘You overheard everything the doc and this New York lawman said to each other?’
    ‘It seemed to me that Childs was eager to have an audience. Like he’d have been happy to yell it from the rooftops, I reckon. I have some kind of interest in the killing of his boy so I listened.’
    ‘Segal reckons the doc was planning to have the New York guy try to prove Billy was murdered. That how you heard it?’
    ‘The bartender told it right.’
    Flynt finished his coffee, shook his head reflectively and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. ‘This New York guy wasn’t with the police any more? He quit, ain’t that right?’
    ‘That’s what he said.’
    ‘How Buck Segal heard it, he threw in his job after stirring up some dirt on a bunch of other detectives in the city?’
    Edge nodded and leaned forward to open the stove lid and drop his cigarette butt inside. Then Flynt rose suddenly, set down his empty cup and said:
    ‘Thanks for the coffee. It’s much appreciated by these old bones of mine.’
    ‘Sorry that getting warm from the cold is all I can help you with, marshal: that I can’t tell you anything else about the new murder.’
    27
    Flynt halted abruptly on the threshold between the parlour and the store, did a grimacing double take at Edge and growled: ‘As far as I’m concerned, Billy Childs either killed himself or his death was an accident, mister.’
    ‘You’re the expert,’ Edge allowed evenly.
    The lawman made to step into the store, but held back again. ‘And as for what happened tonight, that seems pretty cut and dried to me. Shelby stirred up too much trouble for his own good back in New York. So somebody was put on his trail and paid to keep him from doing any more damage. It was just damn bad luck for Charlie Childs that he happened to be in the line of fire when the hired gun caught up with Shelby. Goodnight to you.’
    The disgruntled lawman crossed the darkened store quickly, the door opened and closed behind him and for a while Edge sat listening to the subdued sounds of rain on the windows and the crackle of flames in the stove. Then he finished his coffee, picked up the cup Flynt had used, carried it with his own into the kitchen, rinsed them both in a basin of water and turned them upside down to drain and dry. Returned to the parlour, took the coffeepot from the stove and went back into the kitchen. Stepped out through the rear door into the lightly falling rain, moved to a corner of the fenced yard and upended the pot to tip the sodden grounds into a hole dug for household garbage. During the time these chores took, he was unable to decide whether Ward Flynt truly believed what he had said concerning the motive for the double shooting in Eternity tonight. Then he straightened up and cursed softly: annoyed at himself for dwelling on a problem that was none of his business. And remained chagrined as he turned his mind to reflecting bitterly that disposing of domestic waste behind a tailor’s store in a Kansas town on a rainy night was not how he had ever visualised any part of his future. A horse whinnied behind the six feet high solid rear fence at the side of the communal stable and he glanced in that direction. And in a sudden bright splash of yellow lamplight from a door opened by one of his immediate neighbours he saw the familiar white marking on the head of a dark coloured horse. He instinctively reached for his revolver and cursed when the heel of his clawed right hand slid off his thigh – where the Colt would have been holstered had he not been taking his ease in his temporary home, his gunbelt hung from a peg behind the parlour door.
    He glimpsed astride the mount a figure attired in an all-enveloping rain slicker: both the rider’s arms