The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  It was a big undertaking, the transcontinental railroad, and as much as Jed Reno despised the damned thing, he had to admit it was progress. And had made him fairly wealthy.

  He rode about five miles north, decided that was good enough, and dumped the bodies into an arroyo. Buzzards had to eat. So did coyotes. And one thing Jed Reno did not like about that railroad was the fact that since they had started laying track across this part of the territory, most of the game had left the country.

  * * *

  Reno could remember talking with Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and other trappers. It hadn’t been at one of the rendezvous because, the best Reno recalled things, those gatherings had ended by then. Maybe it had been at Fort Bridger. Talk had reached Bridger’s trading post about a railroad being planned, one that would stretch across the country. Carson had shrugged. Bridger had allowed it was true. Reno had laughed and called it a fool’s folly.

  “How you gonna get one of them trains across these Rockies?”

  “Don’t underestimate man’s ingenuity,” Bridger had said.

  “Where, by thunder,” Carson had said, “did you pick up that ‘in-gen-yoo-ah-tee’ word?”

  “And in winter?” Reno had said. “Can’t be done.”

  Of course, a few years earlier, Reno would never have thought he would be seeing prairie schooners by the hundreds crossing the Great Plains and then across the mountains, bringing settlers from New York and Pennsylvania and other places foreign to a man like Reno, bound for the Oregon country and later California. Farmers. Merchants. Women and children and even milch cows and dogs. One gent had been hauling sapling fruit trees to start some orchards in the Willamette Valley.

  Born in 1796 in what was now Bowling Green, Kentucky, Jed Reno had seen much in his day. His father then apprenticed Reno to a wheelwright up in Louisville, and Reno took that for longer than he had any right to before he stowed away on a steamboat and went down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. New Madrid. Then St. Louis. And then he signed up with William Henry Ashley and set out up the Missouri River and became a fur trapper. That had been the life, maybe the best years Reno would ever live to see, but . . . well . . . nothing lasts forever. Beavers went out of fashion. Silk became favorable for hats. Now fur felt had become popular. By Jupiter, Reno had a hat of fur felt on his head now, too.

  So when Reno happened upon some men who said they were surveyors, and when they paid him gold to do their hunting and scouting for them, Reno decided that Jim Bridger was a pretty wise gent after all.

  Reno had only one eye, but few things escaped his vision, and he had two good ears. And to live in the wilds of the Rockies and Plains since 1822, you had to see, and you had to hear. Reno listened to the surveyors. And he watched.

  Apparently, there were a number of surveys going on. A couple were down south, which made a lot of sense to Reno. Weather would be warmer, less hostile, across Texas and that desert country the United States had claimed after that set-to with Mexico. Another up north, somewhere between the forty-seventh and forty-ninth parallels north—whatever that meant. Reno wasn’t sure England would care too much for that. Seemed to Reno that ownership of all that country up north was being debated between the king—or was it a queen now?—and whoever was president of these United States.

  But the surveyors kept talking about a war brewing between the states. It had something to do with freeing the slaves or, to hear one of the men who spoke with a Mississippi drawl, it had to do with “a bunch of damn Yankees pushing us good Southern folk around.” That got Reno to figuring that there was no way the United States would put up a railroad across country that might not be part of the United States in a few years. So he paid even closer attention to the surveyors.

  Around 1853, some surveyors had been hauling their boxes and making their maps along what most folks called the Buffalo Trail, led by some captain named Gunnison. Something the surveyors called the Thirty-fifth Parallel Route. Reno figured that one died when Ute Indians killed some of the soldier boys, but he also met another one of those young whippersnappers who called himself an engineer. Went by the name of Lander, Frederick W. Lander, who worked for some outfit called the Eastern Railroad of Massachusetts. Lander told Reno that there could never be a railroad in the South, but a railroad had to connect the Pacific with the Atlantic because if war came—not among the states, but against a European power with a strong navy and mighty army—the United States would not be able to defend California without “an adequate mode of transit,” whatever that meant.

  So Reno decided to throw up a trading post along Clear Creek in the Unorganized Territory, take a gamble that Lander was right, and that eventually he’d be selling items to greenhorns stopping for a rest on this transcontinental railroad.

  The post was a combination of logs—which he had hauled down from the Medicine Bow country—and dirt. He had built it into a knoll that rose near the creek, digging out a cave that he knew would be cool enough in the summer and hot enough in the winter. The logs stuck out and made the post look more like a cabin, though, and gave it more of an inviting feel. Reno had never cared much for those strictly sod huts that looked, to him, like graves. This way, part log cabin, the post didn’t seem completely like a grave to Jed Reno.

  A few years later, Lander came back again, and this time he had some painter guy with him. That’s when Jed Reno began feeling pretty confident about his investment. After all, if you hired some artist to paint some pretty pictures of you working, then you had to think that this was being documented for history.

  Besides, even if it didn’t happen, if the railroad went north or south or never at all, well, Jed Reno still had a place he could call home, that would keep him warm in the winter and cool in the summer. He had a good source of water, and could fish or hunt or get drunk or just sit on his porch—if you could call it a porch—and watch the sun rise, the sun set, the moon rise, the moon set. By Jupiter, he was pretty much retired anyhow, like ol’ Bridger.

  Of course, the war came—just like everyone had been talking about—and the surveyors and engineers stopped coming. Poor young Frederick Lander. He joined up to fight to preserve the Union, and from the stories Reno heard, the boy took sick with congestion of the brain and died somewhere in Virginia in 1862. Wasn’t even shot or stuck with one of those long knives or blown apart by a cannonball. Reno wondered if that gent with the paintbrushes—some gent named Albert Bierstadt, who had dark hair, a pointed beard, and penetrating eyes—ever amounted to much.

  * * *

  Most of the blood inside the trading post had been covered with more dirt, which Reno packed down with his moccasins. The merchandise that had been busted, or soaked or stained with blood, he tossed into a canvas bag and hauled to the smelly dump that the settlers, who had not moved on with the railroad, had started up and was already attracting vultures and rats and coyotes and flies. But it was far enough away from Reno’s post that the smell seldom bothered him too much.

  He salvaged most of the merchandise, not that it really mattered. Since the railroad had moved on, Reno had not seen much business, and since the trains brought only supplies and more workers, it wasn’t like settlers were stopping to spend money on trinkets and blankets and tin cups. Reno began to doubt if he could ever sell anything else—not that he really cared one way or the other.

  Fixing the hitching rail was probably the easiest thing, since he had hammers and plenty of nails and even some spare ridgepoles, located behind the post, he could use. The roof and the porch, however, were another matter. He had to use another pole to replace the one he and The Voice had knocked down, and then secure that with another pole, nailing one end to the vertical pole and ramming the other between two logs, which he then patched with chinking.

  After that, he had to climb onto the roof and throw enough brush down to cover the hole one of the bandits had made with his double-barreled shotgun. He could hear some of the dirt sprinkling from his ceiling and probably dirtying up his bolts of fabric an
d those nice woolen blankets. But he could beat the dirt out of them later. It would give him something to do.

  While he was still on the roof, he heard a couple of shots from the settlement, which some citizens were starting to call a town. Reno ignored that, kept busying himself with the roof, and then piled dirt on top of the hole. He was satisfied with his handiwork. Of course, he had built a few cabins in his day up in the Rockies when he needed a place to winter, and some things Mr. Sneed, the wheelwright, had taught him back in Louisville still registered in his brain.

  He had just finished, and was making his way to the ladder he had fashioned, when he spotted the dust. Reno remained on the rooftop, and checked the loads in the revolving Colt’s pistol he carried these days—another sign of progress, he told himself. An Army Colt could shoot six times before you had to reload it. Back in Reno’s day, a man had to do his job with only one bullet. Else he was dead.

  Four riders, coming from the settlement. Four on horseback. A couple others followed afoot.

  Tenderfeet.

  Reno sighed. He hoped those fool city folks weren’t coming to complain about him using their dump. Or maybe someone had found the bodies of the three men he had killed and were out to investigate another killing in Violence.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sitting on the roof, he filled his pipe, struck a lucifer against his thumbnail, and brought the match to the bowl, cupping his hands to protect the flame from the wind. Although he sold various tins of all types of tobacco, Jed Reno still preferred his homemade mix. The Shoshones called it äñ-ka-kwi-nûp, but among the fur traders, it was known as kinnikinnick. Shavings from willow bark and crushed sumac, mugwort, sage, and a little carvings from his plug tobacco. It relaxed him. Just in case, though, the townsfolk weren’t coming to chat, he drew his Colt revolver and laid it on the roof, behind his back, and out of sight.

  They took their time, even those riding horseback. That could mean that the settlers riding meant to keep those afoot company. Or it could mean that not a one of them felt any pressing need to see Jed Reno. By the time they came close enough that Reno could make out their faces, he had finished his smoke. So he tapped the pipe against one of the cottonwood logs that helped hold his roof up, and stuck the pipe in the pocket of his buckskin jacket.

  “Halloooo, Jed!” one of the men on horseback called out. “All right if we come for a talk?”

  “Come ahead,” Reno said. He waited on the roof.

  The one who led the committee was Jasper Monroe. Maybe five-eight, fair-skinned, gray-eyed, and potbellied. By trade, he was a barber, and he had been pressed into undertaking. Both jobs, though mostly the latter, kept him busy—especially when the railroaders got paid and, after baths and shaves, took to drink. Jasper Monroe hailed from Davenport, Iowa, or so he said. Kept talking about the Mississippi River, how green things got in Davenport, and how humid, and saying things like he couldn’t believe how dry things were in this territory, or windy.

  Although he always held his tongue, Jed Reno wanted to warn that greenhorn that he hadn’t seen wind or dry yet—but just wait. Having spent a few of his formative years in New Madrid—on the Mississippi River—Reno would grant that this territory wasn’t muggy or sticky or anything close to humid, even when Clear Creek flooded.

  Monroe had been appointed or elected or volunteered—Reno didn’t know or care which—the mayor of the settlement. Another of the men on horseback was Eugene Harker, a freedman who basically helped Jasper Monroe by keeping him supplied with hot water when he was barbering or by emptying the spittoons. When Monroe took to his undertaking duties, Harker did the grave digging and singing of a hymn and acting as the official mourner. Almost always, except for Monroe, the black man was the only person at the funeral—unless you counted the deceased. Harker had been laying track for the Union Pacific before he decided to draw his time and stick around and make a home in this windswept country. He could sing, though, a deep bass, soulful. His voice carried all the way to Reno’s post, unless the wind blew the other direction.

  The other two men, riding sorrel mares, one saddled, the other bareback, were Cutter—Reno couldn’t recall the man’s first name—and Henry Yost. They had partnered in a hotel, which only did business when some big gent from the Union Pacific stopped by.

  They had hauled in framed lumber and put up a false front to make the log cabin look a bit classy—until you stepped inside. Well, the owners swore that once the town got on its feet, they would make their hotel the grandest establishment between Omaha and San Francisco, which caused Jed Reno to wonder just how many hotels were there right now between Omaha and San Francisco. Probably not one.

  Now that the tracks and most of the workers had moved on west, there wasn’t that much business in town, which had stopped the hostlers’ expansion plans. Cutter, in a broadcloth suit covered with a linen duster and stovepipe hat, rode the saddled sorrel. Henry Yost, in a plaid sack suit and no hat, came along bareback. He had amused Reno with his riding, bouncing this way and that, sliding left and right, but somehow managing not to fall off the fat mare. When they finally stopped in front of Reno’s post, Henry Yost slid off the horse’s back, began stretching his legs and back, rubbing his buttocks, and wiping his sweaty face and bald head with a silk handkerchief.

  The two men afoot called themselves land speculators: a fat man from Boston named Aloysius Murden and his skinny, bespectacled partner, Duncan Gates. Gates also owned a mercantile and served as the postmaster, since the mail was all dumped at his store. Murden was a federal land agent, and the real estate agent for any lots bought in the town of Violet—often referred to by the town’s residents as Violence.

  “Fixing your roof, Reno?” Gates asked.

  Idiot, Reno thought. “Admirin’ the view,” he said.

  Murden turned around and looked back at the settlement. “It is pretty, isn’t it?”

  Reno answered by spitting from his perch. The place looked like Hell. When he had put up his trading post, you couldn’t see anything but sagebrush, prairie grass, hills, and distant mountains. Maybe a Cheyenne or Shoshone Indian every once in a blue moon. Buffalo grazed alongside antelope. Now the damned terrain was littered with tents and trash and sod huts and shoddily constructed cabins. Iron rails and wooden crossbeams and leveled land. And one hill dotted with wooden crosses, many of which had already toppled over from winds and rains.

  “There’s been another killing, Mr. Reno.” Jasper Monroe’s statement caused Murden to turn around, frown, and stick his hands inside the deep pockets of his striped britches.

  Reno studied the six men and leaned back, adjusting his right hand so that it rested closer to his Colt revolver. He carefully shot a glimpse toward the arroyo and trash heap, where he spotted a few buzzards swooping in as others flew off, having filled their bellies for the time being on the dead thieves Reno had left there.

  “Actually, two.” Monroe corrected himself.

  Reno gave the mayor a closer look. Unless the fool couldn’t count . . .

  “One at Slade’s,” Monroe said. “Another at O’Rourke’s.”

  With a nod, Reno brought his right hand away from his revolver, and rested it on his buckskin trousers. They weren’t here about the men he had killed after all.

  “Good business for you and Harker,” Reno said.

  The mayor frowned. “This is serious, Mr. Reno. Violet has a chance to be a beacon on the U.P. line. This is fine country. We’ll be getting more and more settlers here soon. But if men like Slade and O’Rourke . . .”

  With a yawn, Reno looked at his fingernails and hands. Needed a good scrubbing. He let the mayor speak his mind, but paid no attention to anything the city dude had to say.

  That two men had died in Slade’s bucket of blood and O’Rourke’s gambling den came as no surprise. The hilltop cemetery had been populated mostly by men who died in one of those—what had Henry Yost called them? Dens of antiquity?”

  Micah Slade had fought on the losing side during the
War of the Rebellion, and came west from Alabama with a patch over one eye and a left arm that just hung uselessly at his side. Jed Reno, of course, had only one eye himself, and no one called Reno an invalid. No one called Micah Slade one, either, unless he wanted to die. He dressed in black, wore a brace of Navy Colts stuck butt forward inside a green sash, served whiskey and beer in the front room of his sod saloon, and ran some sporting girls in a hog ranch right behind his place.

  Paddy O’Rourke came from County Cork, by way of New York City, where—if you believed anything Cutter said—he killed a policeman during the draft riots in ’63 and fled west. Apparently—again, this came from Cutter—O’Rourke had run some gang in the Irish slums of the city, and had been following the railroad at every Hell on Wheels camp since Omaha. He employed ten cardsharpers and confidence men who fleeced the Irish and black workers for the railroad at the faro layouts and roulette wheels and poker tables in his place, which wasn’t anything but a tent made of canvas and poles, although he said he planned on making things permanent here. He was hurrying, too, because O’Rourke was no fool. Fall had settled on Clear Creek, and winter would not be far behind—not in this part of Dakota Territory.

  “We want Violet to become the greatest city in the territory,” Mayor Monroe said.

  Reno stopped looking at his dirty skin and fingernails and trained his one eye on the barber. “You mean Violence.”

  Which was what everyone called that Hell on Wheels practically since the rails first arrived, the first tents went up, and the first man got himself shot dead.

  “I mean Violet, sir.” The mayor was already stumping for the next election, like there would be another election. “If we do nothing to stop the bloodshed, sir, Cheyenne will win and Violet will be second to that Hell on Wheels in this part of the country.”