The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “But I have a jail in mind.”

  * * *

  The pack mule trailed the black horse as Tim Colter rode easily back toward the town known as Violence. The town leaders followed, afoot, but there wasn’t much dust being kicked up, and the wind was blowing at their backs anyway. Trailing the strange procession was Jed Reno, on his favorite horse, keeping his Hawken trained at the shackled Mix Range, who staggered along in front of the old fur trapper.

  When they reached Sixth Street, Colter reined to a stop, and waited for the mayor and his aldermen to catch up. When they had, he pointed to the corral and lean-to at the corner of Sixth and Union.

  “What?” Mayor Monroe asked, took off his hat, and scratched his head.

  Both corral and lean-to were empty, and the way the grass shot up from the corral and side of the little structure said no horses had been stabled inside for quite a while. Which was exactly what Jed Reno had told him when they had first walked to town.

  Vern Carpenter had owned the corral, bought the lot from the land speculators, put up the corral and lean-to. Vern Carpenter figured that Violence would become that bona fide town on the U.P. line and he would make a fortune as a liveryman. But Vern Carpenter, the way Jed Reno put it, had a weakness for rye whiskey and raw women. He also had a temper. So it had surprised few people in town when Vern Carpenter’s body was found lying in a frozen water trough in front of Jake’s Place. Jake Trimble had sworn that Carpenter had not even set foot at his poker table that evening, and everyone believed Jake Trimble.

  Not because Jake Trimble was honest, but because Vern Carpenter had been stabbed fifteen times in the back, arms, head, and chest, and everyone in this part of Idaho Territory knew that Jake Trimble never used a knife. He had killed, of course, four of the men buried on Violence’s Boot Hill, but every one of them had died from bullets fired by the Sharps derringer Trimble favored. No one had ever seen Trimble with a bowie knife.

  “It’s available, isn’t it?” Colter asked.

  Yost blurted out: “You can’t mean to tell us that you want that lean-to . . . as your jail?”

  Gates and O’Rourke laughed, too, at the sheer folly of such an idea. Mayor Jasper Monroe kept scratching his head. Mix Range stood with his mouth agape. Jed Reno grinned.

  Colter chuckled. “Heavens to Betsy, no. Of course not. That lean-to wouldn’t hold a rat or mouse. The corral. That’s going to be the jail in Violence.”

  CHAPTER 20

  He waited till the councilmen—if that’s what they were—walked back to town, leaving him alone with Mix Range and Jed Reno.

  “You gonna keep me in this?” Range finally asked.

  “That’s the plan,” Colter answered, and made his way to the pack mule. With a grunt, he heaved the heavy canvas bag off the packsaddle, and, using both hands, carried it to the edge of the corral, where the prisoner and mountain man waited.

  Reno opened the gate, testing the wood. “Sturdy enough, I reckon,” he said. “For tame hosses. Maybe not wild mustangs or Indian ponies.” His one eye locked momentarily on Mix Range. “Not sure about prisoners, though.”

  Mix Range stepped inside the corral, laughing so hard he almost doubled over. “You think you can pen me up like your mule, Marshal? Well, that’s real funny. I thought you was a damned fool to try to bring law to this burg. Now you’re provin’ that you’re dumber than my kid sister down near Horseshoe Bend way.”

  The bag clanged with iron banging against iron when Colter dropped the sack onto the dirt. Kneeling, he unfastened the opening to the canvas and reached inside. He pulled out a heavy oval made of iron, with iron braces coming out the bottom. A key remained inserted in a lock in the oval.

  “What the hell’s that?” Range fired out.

  “A Gardner Shackle,” Colter answered. “Or what we call back in Salem, an Oregon Boot.”

  Mix Range’s protest was short because Reno clubbed him with the butt of the Hawken. When the killer finally sat up, holding the walnut-sized knot on his head, he looked at the device that had been secured above his ankle. Colter held up the key, then slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  Range tried to lift his leg, but grunted in pain.

  “That’s the heaviest one I have,” Colter said. “Thirty pounds. I think that’ll keep you here for a while.”

  “He won’t run far, that’s sure as shooting,” Reno said.

  “It’s already rubbing ag’in’ my skin,” the prisoner complained.

  Colter pushed his hat up. “When I first saw those things, at the state pen in Salem, I didn’t really like them. It was the warden’s invention.” He pointed at the “boot.” “Even got a patent for them, but I’m not sure any other prisons are using these yet.”

  “He give those to you?” Reno asked.

  Chuckling, Tim Colter shook his head. “J.C. Gardner doesn’t give away anything. He sold them to me.”

  “How do I get it off ?” Range wailed.

  “If you’re a good boy, I’ll see about replacing this one with a twenty-pounder. Be real good, and maybe you’ll be wearing the five-pound one before the Texas authorities come to fetch you back to the fine Lone Star State. Till then, you just find a nice spot in the corral and make your home.”

  “This thing won’t hold me!” Mix Range shouted, and found a bit of defiance in his voice, but Colter and Reno knew that was nothing but bluff.

  “Yeah,” Reno said. “I recollect Big Thadd Hostetler.” He gestured off to the northwest. “Trapped beaver with us back in ’31, no, ’33 it was. Well, Big Thadd was up in the Bitterroots one fall, stepped right into a bear trap. Couldn’t set his right leg free.” Reno tapped the inside of the Oregon Boot on Range’s ankle. “Right about that same spot, I reckon.” He whistled, and began searching for his pipe and tobacco.

  “He die?” Range asked, his lips quivering.

  “No. Big Thadd. Nah, last I heard he was hopping around Fort Hall, clerking at some store or some such.”

  “Hoppin’?” Range’s face began to lose all color.

  “Sure. Seen it happen to coyotes and wolves all the time. Get caught in a trap like that. Know they’s done for. Nothing for them to do but gnaw off their leg. Reckon they’d have to break the bones, though. Teeth ain’t that tough. Can’t gnaw through bone. But if you break it. Man, that’s gotta hurt. Hurt like blazes. And the way my leg feels, and from what I heard, ain’t there two bones in that part of a man’s body.”

  Colter tried not to grin. He answered. “Tibia and fibula.”

  “So he’d have to break the both of them first. Which one’s the big bone?”

  “Tibia,” Colter replied.

  Mix Range was now sweating.

  “So he’d break the little one first. Just bend that leg back till the little . . . What was it?”

  “Fibula,” Colter answered.

  “Right. Break the fibula first. But then he’d have to break the big one, and he’d know just how god-awful breaking that little puny bone hurt. Man . . .” Reno shuddered. “I don’t see how Big Thadd done it. But he done it. Just like a coyote and a wolf.”

  “He cut off his own foot?” Mix Range wailed, wiped his face, and almost broke down crying. “He taken a knife and sawed off his own foot . . . after breaking those two bones?”

  “Oh, no, boy,” Reno said with a laugh. “You wasn’t listening to me. He didn’t have no knife. Dropped it when the teethes and clamps of that big iron trap snapped against him. Couldn’t reach the damned blade. No . . .” Reno grinned, and ran a finger over his teeth. “He gnawed through his leg. Like a coyote or wolf, even a beaver or maybe even a silvertip griz. With his choppers. Like mine.”

  Colter grinned. Reno smiled. Only Mix Range saw little humor in the one-eyed trapper’s story.

  “Well,” Reno said. “That ain’t just no big windy, boy. I was funning a bit about using his teeth and all, but you head up to Fort Hall, and if Big Thadd’s still living, you’ll find him hobbling around on a crutch. He did take off his own leg.
Which is what you’d have to do to get shed of that thing.”

  “He has a bigger problem than the shackle,” Colter said. “I still think Micah Slade will send someone here to kill him. Keep him from talking.”

  “I ain’t gonna talk,” Range said, finding his nerve again.

  “I believe you,” Colter said. “I just don’t think Micah Slade can take that chance.”

  Range looked around. “What do I do if it rains?”

  “You get wet.” Colter walked out of the corral, holding the gate, which he closed, and slipped a bar lock through an opening to keep it shut once Reno had strolled out of the pen.

  Colter pointed to the lean-to.

  “We’ll fix that up,” he explained. “Put some blankets over it, a tarp on the roof. That’ll keep the rain out. And keep it closed. You’ll be in there from time to time.”

  “I will?” Reno asked.

  “If you want to be my deputy.”

  Reno grinned. “Ain’t never been no deputy before.”

  “That way you can keep an eye on the jail. When you want to. The prisoners. They won’t know when you’re in there and when you’re not. So if you need to go tend your post.”

  “Ain’t much business there no how, not these days. Folks stay in Violence to do their shopping. And the sodbusters don’t come in to speak that Flemish talk none. They’s too busy trying to break sod.”

  “All right. Let’s find a café, get something to eat, see what’s stirring up in town. We might even bring back a few more prisoners. To keep Mix Range company. If he’s alive when we get back.”

  “Think he’ll be here when we get back?” Reno asked.

  “If he’s not, he won’t be far away. Not with thirty pounds on his leg.”

  * * *

  The restaurant wasn’t as nice as the Bullfrog Café in Salem, Oregon. The food wasn’t as good. The waitress wasn’t as lovely as Betsy McDonnell. They ate fried potatoes with antelope steaks and corn bread that was close to being stale, and drank weak coffee. Mostly, Jed Reno listened as Tim Colter talked.

  As a deputy U.S. marshal, Colter could not swear in another deputy, not even a jailer. And as a federal lawman, Colter’s jurisdiction was federal. But since Violence, aka Violet, had not been incorporated, and lay in a U.S. territory, Colter was going to push a few legal things and try to keep some semblance of law and order in the railroad stop. He had expected Mayor Jasper Monroe to complain, maybe even point out the difference between federal and local jurisdictions, but so far . . . so good. Besides, Colter figured that he could go into the mayor’s office right now and get that town lawman’s job.

  Reno shoved a fork overloaded with greasy potatoes into his mouth. He spoke with his mouth open.

  “You can be a federal deputy and a town marshal?” He swallowed. “At the same time?”

  “Lot of lawmen wear more than one badge,” Colter said. “More money. I’ve known deputy U.S. marshals who also had appointments as town lawmen, town deputies, county sheriffs, sheriff’s deputies. Everything but maybe a Pinkerton agent, and I’m sure some have those jobs, too.”

  Reno picked up his tin cup, slurped some coffee.

  “How’d you get to be so tough?” the mountain man asked.

  Colter found the napkin on his lap, started to dab his mouth, but then looked a little closer at the ragged, dirty piece of cotton. Instead, he dropped the napkin on his plate and wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. No, this place definitely was not the Bullfrog Café. He thought about the question before answering.

  “I was going to say that you taught me,” he said after a moment.

  “Was going to, but you know that ain’t the truth.” Reno finished his coffee.

  “No.” He thought some more, and finally shrugged. “You read about the little set-to I had with the Rose Gang.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know my wife died. And . . . our . . . kids.”

  Reno nodded.

  “For a while, I guess, I just had no feelings whatsoever. No fear. No worry. Maybe I didn’t care if I lived or died. That’s probably how I was able to get through that little scrape. Jed, I just didn’t give a damn.”

  Again, the mountain man’s head nodded. “I reckon I understand that a bit. Knowed some trappers who had similar thoughts, for different reasons. Knowed plenty of Indians who lived that way. They figured they had no say in when it was their time. So they just fought like blazes. That got you out of that scrape, maybe a few others, still breathing.”

  “Something like that,” Colter said.

  “I bet that there hogleg on your hip helped a bit.”

  Colter grinned. “A little.”

  “But,” Reno said, “you feel a bit different now. Something else has come over you. That I see on your face, son. Even with my one good eye.”

  “Another woman.” Colter smiled. “Betsy McDonnell. You’d like her. She runs a café in Salem. Lost her husband a bit over a year ago.”

  “So now . . . you’re telling me that you do care if you live or die.”

  Colter nodded.

  “So that there performance you been giving. You’re just play-acting. Like that there John Wilkes Booth fellow.”

  Now Colter smiled. “I think you might choose an actor other than Booth. But you learn, Jed. You learn to bluff. Like we bluffed Mix Range.”

  Colter’s head shook. “You think you put the fear of God . . . the fear of Marshal Tim Colter . . . into that man-killer? You think we’ll find him still in that corral when we finish our dinner and walk back to Sixth Street?”

  Colter answered with a shrug.

  Reno reached into a pocket, pulled out a pouch, and dropped a couple of coins on the table. He nodded at the waitress, letting the bony woman know that this was for the meal. “Well, I got some sad news for you, Tim, my boy. We ain’t gonna find that gent in that little pen.”

  Colter was standing, picking his hat off a vacant chair, and thanking the waitress for the meal—even if it tasted like sand and grass, and the coffee like water.

  “I know that, Jed. I saw him limping into Slade’s Saloon about four minutes ago. Let’s go fetch him, shall we?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Tim Colter went through the batwing doors of Slade’s Saloon with the LeMat in his right hand, cocked, and a saw in his left hand. He walked straight to the table, where Micah Slade sat alone, drinking coffee and smoking a cigar, and dropped the saw on the table. He had stopped at a mercantile and bought the saw. Cost more than it was worth, but that was the way things were priced in a raw town like Violence.

  “Tell Mix Range this will help.”

  Slade just stared.

  “The Oregon Boot won’t come off any other way.”

  “Not without the key, right, Marshal.” Slade rocked back on his chair legs. “The one you got in your pocket?”

  “Had.” Slade grinned. “Had in my pocket. Hid it.”

  Slade’s chair came back to the floor. He laid the cigar in the ashtray, and touched the sharp teeth of the handsaw.

  “Or,” Colter said, “Mix could pretend to be a coyote or wolf. Start gnawing.”

  Micah Slade’s eyes showed that he found no humor in Colter’s joke.

  “I’ll give you five seconds, Slade.” Now Colter pointed the big LeMat at the saloon owner’s chest. “Send Mix back down here. Or you join him in Violence’s new jail. Ten-pound shackle for you, I’d think. For harboring a fugitive from justice.” A moment passed. Then the lawman added: “Unless you’ve already killed him to shut him up.”

  There was an icy calm to Slade’s voice. “You think you can walk out of my place after sticking a gun at my heart. You only got six shots in that thing.”

  “Ten. But who’s counting? The pin’s set for the smoothbore barrel, by the way. That’s this big one underneath. They say you’re a heartless bastard, Slade. Once I touch the trigger, at this range, they’ll be proved right when they pick you up off that floor.”

  “Harry!” Slade called out
.

  The bartender answered.

  “Fetch Range for the marshal, would you?”

  “Sure, boss.”

  Now Slade smiled. “He just walked in here, Marshal Colter. We were just keeping him for you. Figured he wouldn’t get far . . . not with that . . . what’s it called, an ‘Oregon Boot’?”

  “That’s what it’s called. Appreciate your dedication to law and order, Slade. Helping us out and all.”

  A door opened, and two other men, with Harry the barkeep following, helped the limping Mix Range out from what Colter guessed was a storeroom. Range walked in obvious pain, so much, after the long walk from the corral on Sixth Street, that Colter wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it all the way back to the jail.

  Harry and the two other men stopped, and Mix Range, his face red with anger, frustration, embarrassment, and pain, limped a few more paces before stopping at the table. Colter motioned with his LeMat, and the surly Alabaman moved toward the batwing doors. Colter backed away from the table, turned on his boot heels, and backed out toward the doorway.

  “Hey, Marshal,” Micah Slade called out. “Don’t forget your saw!”

  “Consider it a gift, Slade,” Colter said. “I figured you might have need of it before too long.” He spotted the mop in a bucket against the wall, took the handle with his free hand, and tested the mop. “Or I’ll just trade you the saw for the mop.”

  “Figure to clean up the town with that?” Slade asked, now smiling.

  “No.” Colter showed him the revolver and smoothbore barrels of the LeMat. “I’ll do my cleaning with this.”

  Outside, he hurried Mix Range past the windows to the saloon, glanced across the street at The Blarney Stone, and waited. Jed Reno stepped around the corner. Colter handed the mop to Mix Range.

  “What’s this for?” the killer asked.

  “Use it as a crutch. Or cane.”

  “That’s worthless,” Range said.

  “I can always go back to Slade and get the handsaw.”

  The killer put the mop side under his armpit, and leaned against the long wooden handle.

  “Well?” the old trapper asked.

  “Middle of the street,” Colter said.