The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  Cheyenne lay down the railroad tracks about twelve miles east. Back in July, General Grenville M. Dodge, heading a U.P. survey crew, had platted out the railroad camp as a city, at a place Reno had always called Cow Creek Crossing. They named it Cheyenne, after the Indians who lived in the region. Reno had not been to see the city that had sprung up first as a bawdy, violent railroad camp and had kept growing, once the tracks reached the city a few weeks ago.

  Most Hell on Wheels camps moved with the railroad, but Cheyenne had always been considered a permanent place, a city that would last as long as the iron rails, maybe even longer. Violet—which everyone except the mayor had corrupted to Violence—wanted to steal Cheyenne’s glory.

  “Homesteaders won’t settle here as long as those blights operated by those two ruffians control Violence,” Mayor Monroe said, not even realizing he had slipped and called his town by its more accurate name.

  “Homesteaders?” Jed Reno laughed. “You think you can farm this country? Mister, it’s November, by my reckoning, getting close to December. You’ve had the mildest fall I’ve ever seen in this country. But you wait till winter comes hitting us with full force.”

  “Our wives, sir, and our children are coming in on one of the next westbound trains.” That came from Henry Yost.

  “It’s true,” Harker confirmed.

  “You’re bringing in womenfolk and kids?” After fetching his Colt and holstering the weapon, Reno climbed down the ladder. “To this country? With winter coming on?”

  “Not only that,” Duncan Gates said, “but by the first of January, we expect the arrivals of the first colonists for the Clear Creek Emigration Company.”

  “The what?”

  “Homesteaders, sir,” Aloysius Murden sang out excitedly. “Adventurous spirits who, after having toiled in the harsh climes of Europe, are leaving Boston for a new life in the West, to better themselves, better our country, and better this land.”

  Reno leaned against the wall and shook his head.

  “You gents are all daft.”

  “I beg to differ, sir,” Mayor Monroe said. “We are dreamers. And we dream of a better country. We dream of establishing a great town, and since the Rebellion has been put down, and the Negroes like Mr. Harker here freed, you are about to witness, Mr. Reno, a great migration of settlers.”

  “I witnessed that already, bub.” Those prairie schooners, most of them bound for Oregon, had ruined this country. At least, that’s how Jed Reno saw things.

  “A trickle,” Murden said. “Think how fast railroads can bring settlers. This whole country will be populated with whites.” He remembered Harker next to him. “And Negroes.”

  “Once,” Duncan said, “the Indians are all buried.”

  Which got a chuckle from Cutter.

  Reno shook his head.

  “And Violet,” the mayor said, “will replace St. Louis and San Francisco as the gateways to the American West.”

  “I see.” Yeah, Jed Reno saw all right. He saw that these white men from back east were all crazy.

  “But we need help, sir,” Jasper Monroe said. “We need to bring law to our fair city.”

  City? If those fools didn’t start building something substantial, they would be blown away and buried underneath mountains of snow. Reno put his hands on his hips. They wanted him to do something. Something foolish. He waited.

  “We need a town marshal, sir. We want you for that job.”

  Reno blinked. He spit. He blinked again. Then he laughed. It was a great belly laugh, something he had not enjoyed for months, maybe even years, perhaps not since he had gotten drunk with Jim Bridger and shared old lies and made up some new ones about trapping and fighting and drinking.

  “Son,” Reno said when he had recovered, “I am seventy-one—I mean . . . I am fifty-nine years old. Too long in the tooth to become some lawman wearing a tin star or something like that.”

  “We need help!” Harker sang out. “Those were not railroaders murdered the other night. One was an executive with the Union Pacific itself. The other was a priest. A priest, sir, bound to save the souls of the heathen Cheyenne redskins.”

  Reno frowned. A man of the cloth, some black robe, murdered at one of those “blights.” It brought back memories of Pierre-Jean De Smet. Reno remembered when old Bridger had, along with Andrew Drips and Henry Fraeb, brought the priest to the Green, the Siskeedee-Agie, back in 1840. The last great rendezvous of fur trappers. De Smet had performed a mass. Reno wasn’t Catholic himself—he didn’t know exactly what he’d call himself, maybe a “heathen,” like the Cheyennes—but he had admired De Smet’s grit and gumption. The black robe had gone to the Gros Ventre Range, to preach the word to a thousand or maybe more Indians: Flatheads, Nez Perce, and Pend d’Oreilles.

  “A priest?” Reno said.

  “Yes,” Cutter answered. “A man of the cloth. Who stood outside O’Rourke’s awful establishment trying to keep those wastrels from the railroad from damning their eternal souls.”

  “Shot in the back,” Harker said, bowing his head. “Twice.”

  “And then some fiend robbed the dead man of God of his crucifix and Bible,” Monroe added.

  “So you see,” Murden said, “we need law. And we need it now.”

  “Help us.” Monroe practically begged.

  Reno studied all six men, looked them in the eye. Fools they might be, yet he could not doubt their sincerity.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry, gents. I just ain’t no marshal. Don’t know nothing about lawing.”

  Every single one of those men’s heads dropped. Their shoulders sagged.

  Reno hated himself. “Well . . .”

  They looked up, eyes filled with hope.

  “I mean . . . maybe . . . well . . . I might know somebody who could help you out, though. Maybe. You’d have to get word to him. And . . . well . . . he’s just a kid.”

  “A kid?” Monroe cried out incredulously.

  Reno spit. “Well . . . no . . . I knowed him when he was just a shirttail young’un, greener than spring grass. But I don’t reckon you’d call him a kid no more. Not by a damned sight.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Tim Colter kicked free of the stirrups as soon as the report of a rifle caught his ears and the blood bay gelding shuddered and fell in midstride of a lope. As he sailed to the left of the trail, Colter caught a glimpse of the six-year-old gelding somersaulting horrifically down the ruts, sending up dust and grass and blood before the horse slammed into a tree. Then Colter hit the ground.

  He came up, spitting out grass and blood from his busted bottom lip. A bullet trimmed several locks of hair. Blinking, he dived to his right as another bullet buzzed past him. That shot came from Colter’s left. The first shot—since his horse had been shot out from under him—had barked out from the woods straight ahead. Likely from the same gunman who had killed Kilroy, the bay he had paid seventy-five dollars for just four months back.

  Colter kept rolling until he landed in a depression, which would offer him a bit of protection from either of those two gunmen. But not from anyone behind him.

  The first bullet ripped the collar of his mackinaw. The second burned his side. Spinning around, but keeping his head low enough so the first two squat assassins couldn’t blow his head off, Colter saw the little line shack maybe thirty yards off the trail. He also saw the man in Mexican denim britches and a checked shirt running at him. White smoke obscured the man’s face, but only momentarily, as the Henry repeater belched and sent another lead slug in Colter’s direction. That bullet went high and wide. It was, Colter knew, difficult for anyone to hit a man, even a stationary one, while running, gasping, jacking the repeater’s level, and firing from the hip. But even an idiot could get off a lucky shot—and the running man was covering a lot of ground, closing in on Colter quickly.

  He had already cocked the pistol in his right hand. In fact, the revolver was in his hand even as he was leaping from the saddle, in midair, trying to see who the hell was shooting a
t him.

  As if he didn’t know.

  The gun bucked in Colter’s hand, and the charging man let out a little scream as he pitched to the left, and sent the Henry crashing into the grass maybe fifteen or twenty yards in front of him.

  Behind him, maybe behind one of those boulders, someone let out an oath, and followed that curse with two shots that kicked sand onto the brim of Colter’s black hat.

  How the hat stayed on his head after leaping from a dead horse, rolling across the grass and rocks, and being shot at from practically every direction would remain a mystery.

  Coming to his feet, Colter ran, shifting the revolver to his left hand, bending forward, and making a swipe at the stock of the Henry rifle as he ran past it. His fingers managed to graze the walnut stock, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. And he knew he had no time, no chance, to make a second try.

  The man with the Henry was lying faceup. Tim Colter’s slug had caught him right in the center of the chest—hardly any blood—and the outlaw had lived only long enough to make that little cry before leaving this cold morning for the warmer climes of Hades. Colter got a good look at the dead man’s face—enough for him to know who was shooting at him, as if he had not already made a pretty good guess.

  Old Man Carter. He wouldn’t be robbing any more banks with Stewart Rose’s gang ever again. Unless Hell had banks.

  A bullet spanged off a rock in front of Colter. Two more dug up grass at his heels. His lungs burned from the cold air as he ran toward the line shack.

  His side felt sticky. Apparently, that bullet had done more than just burn him, but Colter figured it was only a scratch, just a minor irritation. If the rest of Stewart Rose’s boys were doing the shooting, Colter would have much bigger irritations shortly. He needed to make it to that line shack.

  Another bullet knocked off his hat. Now that he got closer, Colter wondered if that shack would provide any cover. With those gaping holes between the picketed slabs of wood, the place was well ventilated, but it had a door. And it was the only thing that might keep Tim Colter alive.

  The door swung open, and Young Man Carter, the Old Man’s behemoth son, came out with a double-barrel shotgun. Young Man Carter, who wore a dirty beard that stretched halfway to his belly, grinned a toothless smile, as he thumbed back both hammers.

  Colter shot the fool and watched him crash against the front of the shack. The big man managed only to knock off one wooden shingle from the roof as he slid to his left and landed atop the big scattergun.

  Colter swore. Young Man Carter weighed a few pounds less than an Oregon steer. There was no way Colter would be able to roll over the body to get the shotgun, and a quick glance told Colter that the dead outlaw carried no sidearm. A bullet splintered part of the door, but Tim Colter had reached it by then, and he pulled it shut.

  He started to look for a bolt—if a bolt would do any good—when a muzzle blast almost blinded him and the roar of a massive rifle deafened him. Tim dropped to his knees, and blinking back spots of orange and red and purple and white, which flashed and burned his eyeballs, he squeezed the trigger, pointing his pistol in the general direction of where the gun blast had almost blown his head off.

  “Arrgggghhh!”

  Wood splintered. A heavy crash. An “oomph.”

  Silence did not last long.

  Several gunshots popped the walls of the shed. However, despite how weak the building looked, the wood was not rotting, and none of the bullets managed to pierce the walls, although two or three went through the holes in those walls and dug up the dirt floor.

  Colter could see now. He saw the soles of the boots of the dead man who had shot at him at point-blank range, somehow missing with the .50-caliber Sharps rifle. Colter had managed a scratch shot that hit the man in the belly and sent him crashing through the west wall. That man, Blondie Kidd—Colter could tell from the dead man’s corn-colored hair—still clutched the Big Fifty, and Colter’s shot had blown him too far out of the shack for Colter to risk a grab at the rifle. Which was empty anyway, Sharps rifles being single shots.

  Colter ran his free hand to his side. He felt the tackiness of blood, and despite the cold, the wound burned. Colter was also sweating. He came up and slid to his right so that he no longer would make an inviting target for someone on the west side of the cabin. Blondie had made a pretty big hole in the wall for such a slender young punk.

  Once he positioned himself against the door—the strongest part of the cabin, since the door had been made of hardwood and had no gaps for bullets to come through—he tried to figure his chances of getting out of this mess alive.

  Zero.

  That didn’t take long, and math and statistics had never been Tim Colter’s best subjects.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Colter!”

  He recognized the voice.

  “Tim Colter,” Stewart Rose bellowed. “I’ve been doing some ciphering.”

  Colter wet his lips. “Without your abacus?”

  Stewart Rose had killed sixteen men—if you believed the wanted dodgers—robbed twelve banks, four stagecoaches, at least one omnibus, and, in Virginia City, Nevada, he and his gang of cutthroats had even robbed a gambling parlor before riding off and stopping at a brothel to rob it, too. But the outlaw appreciated a sense of humor.

  He laughed.

  “You got style, Colter,” Rose shouted. “I’ll give you that much. You got style. Yes, sir. Plenty of style. But you got three shots left.”

  Colter glanced at the heavy revolver in his right hand. He thumbed back the hammer.

  “What makes you think I haven’t reloaded?” Colter called out.

  “Because my left boot’s pressing your powder flask into the dirt.”

  Colter reached into a pocket on his jacket, but all he felt inside was scratchy wool.

  “And everybody knows you never have trusted paper cartridges.”

  Colter had to smile. “What else do you know about me?”

  “Not a thing, Marshal. I just know about guns. A Colt and a Remington hold only six beans in the wheel, pard. And that’s if you ain’t caring too much for safety. Most folks keep an empty chamber under the hammer. But I figure, you on our trail, you’d shun safety. So I say you got three shots left.”

  “What if I have a Paterson Colt?” Colter said. He glanced through the openings, but no sudden movement—no un-natural things like flashes of sunlight from spurs or knives or revolvers . . . no red flannel or pale muslin. Just the normal sights of late November in the state of Oregon.

  Stewart Rose laughed again. “Then you’d have only five shots anyway, which would reduce you to two.”

  “Two or three shots might be all I’d need,” Colter said.

  “But I got four men left with me. And then there’s me. And I don’t die easy.”

  He heard the click—wear a star long enough and you recognized that metallic sound of a Colt revolver being cocked—and caught a glimpse of flannel, though it was green, not red, and therefore harder to spot. Tim Colter brought the revolver up as the man in the green flannel shield-front shirt swung around and fired through the opening Blondie Kidd had left in the west wall.

  The bullet slammed into the door and sent splinters digging into Colter’s cheek. But his own gun bucked in his hand, and Green Flannel fell to his knees, spit out bloody phlegm, almost fell forward atop Blondie Kidd’s body, but somehow managed to push himself up, and then bring up the Remington revolver in his left hand.

  Left hand. Then that would be Drew Livermore. Colter aimed carefully, steadying the heavy revolver with his free hand, and squeezed the trigger again. The pistol belched smoke and Drew Livermore fell backward, sending his Remington sailing far behind him. The outlaw kicked twice, shuddered, and farted as he died.

  The shack now smelled of sulfur, and smoke irritated Colter’s eyes almost as much as the sweat. His ears rang for a while, but slowly that noise died down until all Colter could hear was the wind moaning through the cracks in the shack’s wa
lls.

  “Drew didn’t die too easy, neither,” Stewart Rose said. “Which means you got just two shots.”

  Colter eared back the revolver’s hammer. “And you’re down to four men, counting you.”

  “And here we come, Marshal.”

  It was no bluff. After seven weeks on Stewart Rose’s trail, that was one thing that Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Colter had learned about the man he was pursuing. Stewart Rose never bluffed. He was a cutthroat, a killer, a robber, a thief, and a plunderer, but he was a man of his word. Hailed from Virginia, the dodgers and the writ in Colter’s other pocket all said. Virginians held honor up there with God, mothers, and Robert E. Lee.

  Most of Rose’s gang had ridden with Mosby’s boys in the war, raiding for the Confederacy. Tim Colter had never heard that fabled Rebel Yell.

  Until now.

  Oh, Colter had joined up to put down the rebellion and free the slaves. Back in 1862, he had tendered his resignation as a deputy marshal to his boss, Dolphes B. Hannah, and ridden to Fort Walla Walla, where he quickly found himself elected lieutenant of Company D, 1st Oregon Volunteer Cavalry. But he missed all the glory and fame and carnage that had taken place back east. About as far east as Colter had gotten was over to Idaho Territory in the summer of ’65, well after Robert E. Lee and all the other Rebel generals had surrendered. Colter had seen only action against Indians, and little of that. Mostly, he had led troopers on patrols along the emigrant roads to protect the settlers. And for much of Colter’s duty, he had been sick with various complaints, seeing only bedpans and a drunken doctor at Fort Walla Walla, Fort Vancouver, and chasing Indians—but seldom seeing any at Coos Bay and along the Malheur River until finally being mustered out early in ’66.

  Stewart Rose and his boys were veterans of some of the most savage fighting the United States had ever seen. And now they were screaming as they charged the line shack.

  Shrieking, that unnerving, earsplitting Rebel Yell. Sounding like a bunch of sick coyotes. But coming from three of the shack’s four sides. On foot. A bullet punched a hole in a slat over Colter’s head. He ducked, saw the figure coming from the west, so Colter ran out to meet him, ducking as he made his way through the rough hole in that wall. The pistol came up as another shot blew a hole through the tail of his jacket. It roared, and the man staggered, still clutching his revolver in his right hand, weaving like a drunkard. Another bullet buzzed over Colter’s head. Again he thumbed the hammer, aimed, and fired. The weaving man collapsed in a heap. Colter turned to see two other men running at him from the road.