The Drop Edge of Yonder Read Online Free

gathered in the biggest pot of the night, the bandylegged man staggered towards Zebulon, waving his pistol. "I remember you all right. You're that same mountain scum that stole my bay horse in Galisteo. You and that breed."
    "I never been to Galisteo," Zebulon said, reaching for his pistol.
    Before either of them could fire, three shots from the other side of the room blew out two gas lamps and one of the windows.
    The last thing Zebulon remembered was staggering out of the cantina and trying to make it down the street before he collapsed.

    EBULON DIDN'T SEE THE STARS SHOOTING ACROSS THE SKY like silver bursts of rifle fire, or the goat feeding on garbage next to him, or the Mexican kid sitting on the lip of the arroyo waiting to steal his boots.
    ' Quien es?"
    He turned over on his back, his head pounding as if it was locked inside a giant church bell.
    "Quien es?" the kid asked again.
    Who was he anyway? And where was he? And where was he going? He sat up, wiping the dried blood from his eyes. A man lay next to him, surrounded by smashed bottles and scraps of rotting meat. There was a hole in the man's forehead and his matted yellow hair fell in bloody strands over his face. Zebulon looked closer. There was something familiar about the man's fringed buckskins and torn moccasins and the fact that he was clutching the queen of hearts in one hand. Zebulon watched a fly crawl across the man's cheek. It was a long journey, the way the fly was crawling, then stopping, then crawling on. From life to death, he thought, and back again. And how was he doing on this journey? Was he dead or alive, or was he trapped between the worlds like a blind man? When he shut his eyes and opened them again, the man was no longer there.
    He remembered a full house and a queen of hearts, a shot followed by more shots, then staggering out of the cantina and falling headfirst into the arroyo. He took a deep breath. He wasn't dead. Not that it would be so bad to be dead, the way things had been going.

    The goat's chewing made him think of his Pa. Or maybe it was the smell of stale urine. If the old bastard was still alive, he and Ma would be getting their winter pelts ready to sell. He ought to ride up and help them. Anything to be shut of this town of aging outlaws and second-rate card cheats - one of whom had tried to kill him. Or was that another time in another town?
    ' Quien es?" the kid was asking.
    On the road to nowhere. On the drift ever since he had left his family in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains five years ago. The goat stepped closer, staring down at him with dull insolence, as if to remind him that his string had run out. "Not hardly," he muttered. Not yet. Just to make sure, he raised the Colt and fired a bullet through the goat's eye. One way or the other, he was back. The stinking garbage and the dead goat and the way the Colt felt in his hand convinced him of that, enough anyway, to stumble past the Mexican kid who was sliding back on his haunches as if he had seen a ghost.

    e staggered down the deserted street towards the cantina. Above the moaning wind, he heard the faint chords of a piano.
    The stagecoach was gone. His horse wasn't where he had hitched it and he mounted the first one he came to. Before he could ride down the street, the bandy-legged man staggered out of the swinging doors to take a leak, an act that was causing him trouble with one arm wrapped in a sling.
    Shaken, he looked up at Zebulon. "I swear you're dead, only you're on my horse. Listen. It was a long night, and I didn't see what went down. But it weren't me that smoked you. I tried. Sure. But I got nicked before I called you out. It might have been that whore, the one that dealt the straight flush. She and that ferriner that owns her. Take my word, they're some devilish act, them two. Slicker'n three-headed snakes. When she won that last hand, all hell broke loose. What I recall anyways. Like I said, I wasn't in the best of shape."

    The man's confused,