The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “Anybody else wish to make a disparaging comment about the late Confederate States of America?” the man in the doorway called out. “Or my honor and integrity?” The accent was thick as hominy, but nowhere near as sweet as molasses. An icy voice, cold, without mercy.

  Now the man stepped away from the doors to the saloon, and his black boots kicked the hat again, this time sending it sailing into the street, a few feet to the left of the dying thin man.

  “God,” the thin man croaked. He cried out in agony, shuddered, and turned his head again. “Have . . . oh . . . please . . . mercy . . . mercy. . . .” His head moved skyward, and he shrieked again, which startled a horse tethered to the hitching rail a few doors down from Slade’s Saloon.

  Reno looked away, toward The Blarney Stone, where owner Paddy O’Rourke, one of his gambler-gunmen, and two of his prostitutes stood on the boardwalk, watching.

  “This cur of a coward,” the man in front of Slade’s gin mill said, “insulted me and the country for which I fought. I brook no insults from any man.” He pointed the barrel of his Colt in the general direction of the saloon. “Ask anyone inside and they will tell you what I gave this man.” Now his black hat tilted in the direction of the dying thin man. “I gave him the opportunity to withdraw his insult and apologize. Instead, he reached for the Colt.” A long finger pointed at the weapon lying just below the boardwalk.

  “Self-defense.” Micah Slade had stepped out past the doorway, holding one of the batwing doors with his left hand. “I swear to it.” The saloon owner was staring at Paddy O’Rourke, but then he turned his gaze until he found Yost and Reno. “Swear to it,” he said again. “Mix Range had no choice in the matter.”

  Mix Range. Reno wet his lips. That Harper’s Weekly magazine a few months back, the one that had contained that fancy story and fancier drawings of Tim Colter, had also published an article on Mix Range, some terrible gunman from Alabama who had killed a few peace officers in Texas. The state had offered a pretty good reward for Mix Range’s head. But this was Idaho Territory, not Texas, and Mix Range was showing Violence what might happen to anyone here who might think about trying to collect that three hundred dollars.

  “Anybody here got something to say to me?” Mix Range asked.

  “God . . . ,” the man in the street said. “Mer-cy.”

  Mix Range stepped off the boardwalk and into the mud. He spread his legs apart and slowly raised the Colt. The thumb eared back the hammer. The man smiled. So, Reno observed, did Micah Slade. The revolver boomed, and a .44 ball tore into the thin man’s forehead. Right between the man’s eyes, which now remained open, one looking skyward, the other at his lips. The horse at the rail kicked out and whinnied. No other noise came from town until Eugene Harker stepped onto the street.

  “You shot that man dead,” the freedman said.

  “That I did,” Mix Range answered. “You want to say something about it?”

  Harker shook his head. “Just that we got a law in this here town.”

  “Yeah? I put him out of his misery. I done him a favor. You heard him beg, didn’t you, boy?”

  Harker’s head nodded. He started to speak, but froze at the sight of the Colt in Mix Range’s hand, which was now trained on Eugene Harker’s forehead.

  “Hell.” Jed Reno tossed the cigar into the mud—the flavor had turned vile—and moved down the muddy street. Mix Range saw him coming, but he did not move the Colt’s barrel.

  “Range,” Reno said.

  “Yeah. You got a problem, too, One-Eye?”

  “Nope,” Reno lied. “Just explaining the law of Violence to you. Ask your boss behind you.” He tilted his head toward Micah Slade. “He knows the law. Been in place here since our last marshal got himself buried.”

  Reno stopped. He had placed himself between Mix Range and Eugene Harker. Behind him, he could hear the freedman whispering, “Mr. Reno, you ain’t got to do that, sir. Don’t get yourself blown to hell on account of me.”

  “Ask him,” Reno said.

  Mix Range did not lower the Colt, but he did shoot Micah Slade a curious glance.

  The saloon owner cleared his throat.

  “Reno and Harker are right, Mix,” Slade said. “That’s the law of Violence. The one law. Kill a man, you have to pay for his funeral.”

  CHAPTER 17

  There was another thing about civilization, the railroad, this town called Violence, that sickened and saddened and downright angered Jed Reno. Now, folks might say that Jed Reno wasn’t the cleanest person, and maybe he had dumped or left a few dead bodies around, but he never let trash ruin the country. Oh, he had trash—plenty of it—but he burned it in a pit behind his trading post, or in the fireplace or stove. As he walked away from the booming town, he picked up one beer bottle and several newspapers that sagebrush had snagged. The papers he shoved into his pockets. The bottle he kept in his left hand.

  He stopped when he saw the horse, a good black, tethered in front of the trading post, and a pack mule hobbled in the grass near an extra water trough. He cursed himself, walking into that dung heap of a town, when he had a customer. Maybe even one that would pay, not like those Flemish sodbusters who wanted—well, actually, they had no other choice—to live on credit.

  He pitched the bottle into the bucket by the front door, pulled the papers from his pockets, and tossed those also into his trash bin, and opened the door. A tall, lean, broad-shouldered man sat on the top of the counter, long legs bouncing about, while the man chewed on a peppermint candy. He still wore his hat, and Reno even saw a penny on the top of his cashbox. This gent wasn’t one to live on credit. By Jupiter, he even paid for his candy. Usually, Jed Reno gave those away free—or ate them himself.

  The man stopped chewing, his legs stopped kicking, and he swallowed the candy in his mouth, wiped his fingers on his trousers, and smiled.

  “You haven’t aged, Plenty Medicine.”

  Reno closed the door.

  “Well, I hope to blazes that I have. That I ain’t been dead all these years.”

  The tall man slid off the counter.

  “You got my note,” Reno said.

  “Took a while.”

  Reno shrugged. “Well, never was much at writing letters or nothing. Wasn’t sure how to go about it.”

  “You did fine. I got it.”

  “And you still come?”

  The tall man removed his hat and laid it on the counter. When he faced Reno again, his smile had broadened. “I figured it was what friends do.”

  Then Jed Reno whipped off his hat, sent it sailing to the ceiling, where it crashed and dropped behind him. He let out a war whoop and charged, lowering his shoulder, just catching a glimpse of Tim Colter as he leaned forward and held out both hands. Not to stop Reno. Shoot, that would be as foolish as trying to stop a charging bull buffalo, or one of those locomotives that kept ruining this land. Reno lifted Colter and straightened, then spun around until he felt dizzy, while Colter laughed and playfully pounded on Reno’s buckskin shirt. Eventually he had to stop, and lowered the tall man onto a cracker barrel. Then Reno collapsed into the rocking chair, which he left out for weary sodbusters and lazy, worthless no-accounts. He often swore he would never sit in one of those things, but, well, this one was so damned comfortable.

  When the inside of the trading post—and Tim Colter—stopped spinning around, Reno stared and wet his lips.

  “Now that you’re here,” Reno said, “I ain’t rightly sure I’m glad to see you.”

  “I’ve heard,” Colter said. “Town like this already has a reputation.”

  “You heard?” Reno blinked. “All the way in Oregon.”

  “Nah. But Fort Bridger. And most of the places between there and here. Violet doesn’t sound like a nice place to hang your hat.”

  “It ain’t. That’s why we call it Violence. That fits better. A damned sight better than Violet. Crowding up, too. Both the town and the cemetery.”

  “No law.”

  Reno shook his h
ead. “They tried it. Didn’t cut. Man who pinned on the star thought that was all he needed. He got cut down. Cold-blooded. But . . . well . . . one gent says it was one thing, and that’s all it takes. Makes me long for the days back in those wonderful mountains. Like when Kit Carson settled matters with some old cur who wasn’t worth a cuss.” Reno’s fingers snapped. “Or like you done to Dog Ear Rounsavall.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “You’ve growed up a lot, though.”

  Meaning, you’ve killed a lot.

  “Give me the lowdown,” Colter said.

  Reno frowned. He spit onto the floor, wiped his mouth, and stopped rocking in the stupid little chair. The coffee and stew in his stomach soured, and he felt like a stupid fool, and no friend to this fine young man at all.

  After a heavy sigh, Reno said, “Boy, this here’s the lowdown. You get on that fine-looking horse of yours, take that mule with you, and you ride back to that Oregon country you call home. You forget the ramblings and letter—if you could even call it a letter—that you got from me. Violence ain’t worth it, boy. It ain’t worth dying for.”

  For the longest while, Tim Colter just looked across the room, his eyes locked on the one eye of his old friend.

  “Would you come with me?” he asked at last.

  Reno grinned. “Can’t, boy. This here’s my home. Maybe not Violence. Maybe not Clear Creek. But this here territory. Those hills. Them mountains. The rivers and any beaver that might have survived somehow. I gotta stick here, boy.”

  “Well.” Tim Colter sighed. “I guess I’ll stick awhile, too.”

  Reno’s tone sharpened. “Boy, I just watched a man come staggering out of a saloon with a bullet in his belly. Watched the assassin who shot him kick him in the butt and knock him into the street. Then I watched that devil put a bullet in the dude’s head as he lay dying in the mud. And you know what the fellow who done the killing had to do?”

  Colter absorbed all that. He did not answer. He waited for Reno’s reply.

  “Paid a dollar. A dollar for him to get buried.”

  “Cheap funeral,” Colter said.

  “This town’s cheap.”

  “That why you picked it for your home?” Colter tried to bring a little humor inside the darkened post.

  Reno’s big head shook. “Wasn’t no town when I started digging and rolling in logs. Wasn’t nothing but antelope and some Indians who’d happen by every now and then. Nice place. Good water. Hills to keep the wind off, not like it is over in that town. I kept thinking about old Jim Bridger. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “One doesn’t forget Jim Bridger,” Colter said. “Just like no one ever forgets Jed Reno.”

  The old fur trapper waved off the compliment.

  “Well, I started to thinking about Bridger, about how fine he was living after he give up the good life. Sipping whiskey. Telling lies. Making money off fool emigrants, like you was once. Beaver was all played out, of course, and not much living off wolf pelts and bearskins. Then I met up with some government men plotting that big railroad everyone thought this country needed. Keep the oceans together.” His head shook. “Man, if you want to keep the two oceans together, just dig a damned ditch from the Atlantic to that there San Francisco town I’ve heard about.”

  “That’s a fine idea, Jed. You should run for Congress.”

  “Don’t sass me, boy. I’m seventy . . . I’m sixty years old or thereabouts, but I can still whup you to crying for mercy. So I let greed get the better of me. Greed and laziness. Made a mistake. Didn’t figure that railroad would bring all this trouble. But that’s my headache, and none of your own. So you ought to do like I told you—I saved your hide I don’t recollect how many times all those years ago. You remember that? Don’t you, boy?”

  Colter grinned. “Yeah. And I remember me saving the hide of some one-eyed old reprobate.”

  For the first time, Jed Reno seemed to notice the hogleg holstered on Colter’s right hip. He leaned forward in the rocking chair, and lifted his jaw in that direction. “What kind of cannon you got on your leg, boy?”

  Rising, Tim Colter pushed back the tail of his coat, and withdrew the big revolver.

  “It’s called a LeMat,” Colter said. “Nine-shot revolver with a smoothbore load, too.”

  “You ain’t learned what I taught you, boy?” Reno slid back into his chair. “One shot.”

  “I remember you always told me to reload immediately. Don’t wait. An empty gun doesn’t help you do anything except get killed.”

  Reno grinned. “I was some teacher, wasn’t I?”

  “The best.” Tim Colter was dead serious.

  Silence. But it lasted for just a few minutes.

  “There’s no law in Violence?” Colter asked. “No lawman, I mean. Constable. Sheriff. Policeman. Marshal. Whatever you want to call it.”

  “Never got around to replacing this gent named Cutter after he got plugged.” Reno shook his head. “There was a boy that everyone said killed the marshal, but I knowed that kid. He didn’t do it. They just killed the lawman to run this town the way they want to. Like all those Hell on Wheels, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.”

  Colter nodded.

  “Kid worked for me. Good boy. From some foreign country where everyone’s called Flemish. At least, that’s what I’m told. Farmers.”

  “Farmers?”

  Reno grinned. “I didn’t sell them the bill of sale that brought them here. Dumb as you once was, but good folks. They won’t last, of course. Well, one of them might, but he ain’t no farmer. He and his boys have a ranch south of town. Want to raise cattle.”

  “That’s better than beans,” Colter said. “At least, in this country. I don’t have any prejudice against beans.”

  More silence.

  “Who should I see about taking over for your dead marshal?”

  Reno’s frown hardened. “Mayor’s name is Monroe. Jasper Monroe. Well, he’s the mayor unless he has been replaced.”

  “You mean you’ve already had an election?”

  “No.” Reno shook his big head. “There ain’t no elections. Nothing like that. What I meant was that maybe Micah Slade or Paddy O’Rourke replaced him. Made themselves mayor.”

  “They run the town?”

  Reno cursed himself. There would be no getting rid of Tim Colter. Hell, he should have known that even before he wrote that stupid letter for help. Why, back when he had first found Tim Colter, back then a wet-behind-the-ears city boy from some burg in Pennsylvania, Reno had tried to talk some sense into the kid. Get him back to Bridger’s trading post, away from Dog Ear Rounsavall, Malachi Murchison, and Louis Jackatars. And plenty of other cutthroats.

  “Well, they ain’t exactly married to each other,” Reno said. “One wore the blue. That’d be the Irishman. Runs a gambling parlor and brothel. The other, Micah Slade, he runs a bucket of blood right across the street. He wore the gray.”

  “Still fighting the Civil War, eh?” Colter asked.

  Reno nodded. “Like even today. The fellow who got killed. He was a bluebelly. Or so said the man who killed him. Mix Range.” Reno whistled. “Why, I’d bet twenty prime plews that that’s what Micah Slade has in mind. He wants to put a badge on Mix Range. Make him the lawman. Get control of Violence before Paddy O’Rourke can take it over.”

  Colter was standing now, checking the percussion caps on his big revolver.

  “I guess we should stop Mix Range first.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The façade of The Cheyenne Saloon had been painted purple. Maybe it was supposed to be violet, after the official name of the town, but it looked definitely purple. In fact, one of the ugliest shades of purple Tim Colter had ever seen. The lettering spelling the name of the saloon was black, making it hard to read, but Colter figured that most people who came into a place like this did not read anyway. They could tell what could be found inside by the crude painting of two foaming mugs of beer, and the lewd outline of a naked, plump woma
n.

  Colter turned back and looked across the street at the barbershop and undertaking parlor. Jed Reno leaned against the wall and nodded.

  So Tim Colter pushed through the batwing doors.

  He saw the man with the gray trousers of an ex-Rebel soldier leaning against the bar. Not that it was much of a bar, just a series of whiskey kegs that covered the length of fourteen feet or so, and not even a plank on the top of the kegs. A place like this joint in a town like Violence needed no such formalities as an actual bar. The back bar, if anyone called the wobbly shelves behind the whiskey kegs a back bar, displayed only clay jugs.

  The man in the gray pants and black hat was carrying on a conversation with a man with a dirty green shirt and red sleeve garters. No, it wasn’t a real conversation. The man named Mix Range was doing all the talking.

  “You see, friend, we don’t mind you working in this town. But you got to pay the permit fee.”

  The man who owned, presumably, The Cheyenne Saloon wiped the river of sweat off his face with dirty green sleeves.

  “It’s for protection, you see. A small price to pay. Ten percent of your profits, paid monthly. I’ll collect. Ten percent. And that way your place isn’t burned down. Or your whiskey kegs don’t get filled with holes.” He kicked the keg nearest his right boot for emphasis. “You savvy, don’t you, sir? I mean, you’re a smart businessman. And you wouldn’t want to . . . well . . . let’s say . . . die. Because in a town like this, that can happen, too. It often happens. And it will happen.”

  The sweating man, who smelled riper than a corpse, suddenly joined the conversation.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” Mix Range asked.

  “Yes . . . sir.” The sweaty man was guessing.

  “ ‘Yes, sir,’ what?”

  The sweaty man wet his lips, wiped his brow again, and guessed once more. “Yes . . . sir . . . I . . . understand.”