Killing Time In Eternity - Edge Series 4 by George G. Gilman Read Free Book Online Page B

the parlour toting a large, square, flat rigid framed bag that Edge knew contained artist’s materials. For the man’s favourite pastime was creating with oil paint his vivid impressions of heavenly scenes, which was what he wanted to spend all his time doing as soon as he was able to give up minding the store. ‘You’ll be back when, sir? In the event somebody needs to talk business with you, perhaps?’
    ‘I won’t be hard to find in a small town like this one.’ Edge managed to avoid making the response through gritted teeth as he stepped out into the bright and cold morning, reflecting that for him regular time keeping was one of the more irritating aspects of running a store.
    A small town was precisely what Eternity was. Its two thoroughfares comprised the trail from the east to the west and that was named for Dodge City in one direction and California in the other and a spur that was Main Street which curved north west after cutting off at the meeting of the trails. This became the Wyoming Turnpike after it crossed the Eternity River by way of a plank bridge. There was also a short, unnamed, dead end street that angled off to the right halfway up Main Street. On the California Trail was the row of small houses, in one of which Roy Sims lived, and on Dodge was the depot and the stockyard. The railroad track and the accompanying line of telegraph poles ran parallel with the trails a hundred feet to the south of them. Except for what was known locally as the top end of Main, before it crossed the river bridge, the curving street was lined for most of its length by business premises, as many empty as were occupied after the bubble of Eternity’s predicted boom burst. Behind Edge, at the top end of the street as he headed around the sharpest curve, were the fieldstone church and marker-featured cemetery next to the clapboard school. And across from these a line of larger and better quality houses than the shacks on the California Trail. Then some offices, including that of the lawyer Arthur Colbert, next to Joel Gannon’s funeral parlour and several vacant premises that had never been occupied. Stores supplying the day-to-day necessities and a few luxuries for country town dwellers and out of town ranchers and farmers flanked the central stretch of the street. Vacant lots were not abundant here, but there were several empty stores. The law office and jailhouse was in this section of town, on the corner of the unnamed street that dead-ended at the house of the newly dead Childs father and son. On the opposite corner 32
    was the office of the Eternity Post Despatch , immediately opposite Dan Paine’s livery stable: the area where Charles and Ethan Shelby had been shot down midway between these two buildings. A wagon repair yard was next to the livery, facing a coffee shop, a gunsmith, a bakery and two empty stores. Then came the Washington Memorial Theatre, a vacant lot and the Second Chance Saloon, across from the Eternity Hotel that was the only genuine two story building on Main Street. Next door to this was the First National Bank of Kansas that was in the vee where the street cut off at the meeting of the trails. The commercial buildings of the town were a mixture of brick and timber or both, almost all of them fronted by a porch or a sidewalk that was more often covered than not. Just the second floors of the hotel and the Childs house, the wooden tower of the church and the clapboard false front of the theatre reached above the single story rooflines of all the other buildings in town. Although the rain had eased off during the night and the day had dawned chill but bright, the town nonetheless smelled strongly of damp. And Edge was reminded yet again of the unpleasant taint of mildew in the air that had filled his nostrils to give him his first impression of a town in a state of decay when he stepped down from the train Sunday last.
    Although it was still too early in the day for most businesses to be open,