The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “And I’ll need a new office.” Colter was turning back to the mayor.

  “You have an office. That corral and lean-to. Remember ?”

  “That’s my jail. I was going to sleep in Jed Reno’s trading post, but . . . I guess you must have missed the smoke and flames.... You see, the place burned down. Somehow. And a town lawman ought to stay in town. Don’t you reckon?”

  Monroe’s eyes narrowed until slits. So . . . Monroe wasn’t one to be trusted, either. He wanted the town for himself, too. Just like Paddy O’Rourke . . . and Micah Slade. Those men, Colter could understand. So considering that O’Rourke was on what might have amounted to a town council, Colter had to guess that Jasper Monroe was in O’Rourke’s back pocket. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  “You got someplace in mind?”

  “Yeah. The one next door. The one where you picked up this gent.” Colter pointed at the man who had been blown into the unfinished building, the structure with two-by-four frames, a floor, and a roof.

  “They haven’t even finished building it yet,” the freedman pointed out.

  “I know. But I got to thinking, after Jed Reno’s place was torched, that seeing how that structure stands right next to this one, it’s probably less like to get burned down.”

  He grinned as he backed out of the business.

  “Don’t you agree?” Before Colter left, though, he asked where he could find the post office. He wanted to write a letter to Betsy McDonnell, and tell her he was doing fine, without mentioning all the particulars of what he had endured so far in Violence, Idaho Territory.

  CHAPTER 23

  The man who ran the town of Violence rode in that night, tethered his horse outside of The Blarney Stone, but did not walk into the gambling parlor. Instead, he walked casually down the boardwalk, pulling up his collar and the brim of his hat down, and moving down the street. He stopped only to light his cigar, striking the match on a wooden column. Eventually, when a couple of railroaders staggered on past the building he stared at and stumbled inside Slade’s Saloon, the man crossed the street, went down the alley, and entered the barbershop and funeral parlor through the back entrance.

  The door was unlocked.

  The man was expected.

  He came into the bathing part of the business, where Mayor Jasper Monroe knelt on the floor. Sleeves rolled up, he busied himself scrubbing the washtub.

  Looking up, Monroe wet his lips, then rose, leaving the scrubbing rag, still soapy, in the tub. Monroe found a towel to wipe his hands, and said to the man, “You got my message.”

  “I warned you about how to go about asking about me,” the man said. He drew on the cigar.

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Yes . . . what?”

  Monroe lowered his head. His voice fell to a whisper. “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened?” the man asked.

  Jasper Monroe slowly explained. About the new deputy marshal who came to town, arrested Mix Range. He told about the Gardner Shackle—the Oregon Boot—the lawman was using. How the marshal had—

  “Does this lawdog have a name?” the man who ran the town of Violence asked.

  “Uh . . .” Monroe was so flustered, he had trouble remembering. “Yeah. It’s . . . um . . . Colter.”

  “A first name?” the man said, his voice icy.

  “Tim. That’s it. Tim Colter.”

  The man withdrew the cigar and exhaled blue smoke toward the ceiling. “The same Tim Colter from Oregon way.”

  “Yes. I think so. Yes.”

  The man nodded, but breathed in deeply, held it, and slowly exhaled. “I’ve read about him.” He gestured with the cigar, and said, “Go on,” before returning the cigar to his mouth.

  Monroe talked more about Mix Range.

  “I don’t know any Mix Range,” the man said.

  “He’s one of Slade’s boys.”

  “I see.”

  Monroe finished the story, about how Mix Range had left the corral Colter turned into a jail, hobbled back to Slade’s gin mill, and the ambush set up outside the street that left a lot of gunmen dead—and Jed Reno, Mix Range, and Tim Colter without a scratch.

  “Who set up that stupid affair?” the man asked.

  “Slade, I guess,” the mayor answered, “but I sent Eugene Harker running over to the trading post, had him set the building afire. I figured that might give Slade’s men an advantage—get rid of that lawman, you see.”

  The cigar came out again.

  “You thought of that yourself ?” the man asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Monroe answered.

  The man grinned. The cigar returned to his mouth, and the red tip glowed as he drew in a deep breath, really deep, and then the man walked forward until he stood right in front of Jasper Monroe. The cigar came out of the man’s mouth. He stared at the tip, blew on it, sending ashes into the air like dust motes, and made the tip a deeper orange. Next, the man pressed the tip of the cigar onto Jasper Monroe’s neck.

  “Aiiiiiiyyyyyyyy!” Monroe staggered back, pressing his still-wet right hand against the welt already forming, but the man grabbed his shirtfront, jerked him forward, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “Who the hell are you to think?”

  The man shoved the mayor backward, and Jasper Monroe toppled into the soapy bathtub.

  “Don’t . . . ,” Monroe cried out as the man stepped toward him.

  The man did not stop.

  “The marshal . . . he’s set up shop . . . right next door!”

  That stopped the man. He looked at the Navajo rug, and he pressed his lips together, listening.

  The wind blew. Music played in the saloons and gambling halls. Coyotes yipped.

  Nothing came from next door. The man picked up the cigar he had dropped onto the wet floor. He started to return it to his mouth, but then tossed it into the washtub, between Jasper Monroe’s legs that hung out of the tub.

  “So how many men did Slade lose?”

  Monroe answered.

  The man’s head shook. “Worthless bunch. They can’t even wound one lawdog and a one-eyed old coot who’s forty years past his prime?”

  “Jed Reno’s tougher than a cob.” Monroe thought about trying to climb out of the tub, but decided against it. “And you ought to see that cannon this marshal wears on his hip.”

  The man’s head shook. “No, it’s a good thing Slade’s boys didn’t finish the job. You kill a dumb oaf like B.B. Cutter, and no one gives a hoot or a holler. He’s buried. He’s forgotten a day later. But you shoot down a federal lawman, and we start getting pestered by the big boys in Boise City, and maybe as far away as Washington City.”

  Monroe did manage to pull his feet inside the empty tub. He knew he looked stupid, sitting in a washtub that held only suds, some water, a smoldering cigar, and a coward named Jasper Monroe.

  “The U.P. is backing him, too,” Monroe said.

  “That figures.” The man found another cigar in a pocket on the inside of his coat. He bit off the end, spit it to the floor, and fetched another lucifer. Within a few moments, the cigar was lighted, the match pitched into the tub at Monroe’s feet, and he walked to the wall and leaned against it.

  “I made him the town marshal,” Monroe said weakly.

  “How come?”

  “He asked me to.”

  The man snorted.

  “Well, he didn’t really ask. More like . . .”

  “Demanded,” the man said.

  Monroe could only nod an answer.

  “That doesn’t matter,” the man said. “He’s still got his deputy’s commission from the big cheese in the territorial capital. And we all know what the U.P. thinks about this town. The brass in Council Bluffs will rest a little easier knowing that there’s a local lawdog in this town. That’ll help. And they’ll probably be jumping with joy because our lawman happens to be a famous Oregon pistol-fighter who gets his name written up with pretty drawings of him killing folks in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspape
r.”

  “Harper’s Weekly,” Monroe corrected.

  The man did not listen. Which, Monroe decided, might be a good thing. After all, the man was smoking another cigar, and Monroe’s neck still burned.

  “And the National Police Gazette,” the man said. He dragged on the cigar, thinking.

  “What made you want to torch Reno’s post?” he asked after a long while.

  “Well. I thought it would have helped Slade. Thought if we got rid of the marshal . . .”

  The man nodded. “Maybe. Let Slade hang for killing a federal lawman. Problem is, all that did was kill a bunch of Slade’s gunnies. Which is not a bad thing, I reckon.”

  The man smoked again. Jasper Monroe’s butt was getting cold from the water and soap in the tubs, and his muscles were stiffening. And sitting in a tub that was not full of hot water was not very comfortable.

  “He wrote a letter,” Monroe said.

  The man who ran Violence turned to stare. “To whom?”

  “His girl, I guess. In Oregon.”

  The man smoked, thought, and smoked some more. “Has the mail gone out?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I’ll wander by the post office and read the letter. And any more letters your new lawdog writes, you’ll read them. And report back to me.”

  Monroe managed to nod.

  “We don’t want any more federal deputies coming here, but we don’t want a lawman we can’t control sticking his nose into my business—your business, too. Making him town marshal wasn’t a good idea, though.”

  “Well . . . we can revoke it.... I mean–”

  “No. No. Don’t worry about it.” He kept smoking, thinking, smoking and thinking, thinking and smoking, while Jasper Monroe just got wetter, colder, and ached a lot more. Both feet had fallen asleep.

  “But we’ll have to kill Tim Colter. There’s just no way around that. Colter must die.”

  The cigar came out of the man’s mouth, and this time the mouth turned into a smile. “He just can’t be killed over some town matter. Has to be federal. Federal . . . or . . . personal.”

  “Personal?” Monroe asked.

  The man who ran the town that was known as Violence did not answer.

  Slowly he turned and walked toward the back door. That made Jasper Monroe breathe a little easier. The last words the man who ran Violence said to Monroe:

  “Personal. Personal’s better. Federal will work. But personal comes first.”

  * * *

  The Violet Committee of Aldermen met the next morning in the land office.

  “What did . . .” Duncan Gates lowered his voice. “. . . he say?” The land speculator began wiping his glasses with a handkerchief he fetched from his pocket.

  “Not much.” Without thinking, Jasper Monroe touched the round burn mark on his neck. Then the mayor told the gathered men all that the man who ran the town of Violence had said last night.

  “Killing a lawman is bad business,” Henry Yost said.

  Spitting into the spittoon, Paddy O’Rourke laughed. “You did not seem to have any reservations. But . . .” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I guess, the marshal being your business partner, that made it a wee bit better business for you. In your mind.”

  Yost swallowed, and looked away. His fists tightened into hard balls, but a man like Henry Yost knew he was no match for a man like Paddy O’Rourke. Besides, Henry Yost also knew that he was nothing but a gutless coward.

  “Listen,” said Aloysius Murden, who was already sweating. “I don’t think this lawman is what we need to fear. Just let him alone. What we have to do is do something about those farmers. I thought they’d be gone after winter, but not a one has left. And more are on their way. Our Clear Creek Emigration Company could doom us all. If those farmers stick . . .”

  “They can’t stick,” Monroe said. “This land can’t be farmed. It’s cattle country or wild country.”

  “But more are coming,” Murden cried out.

  “We need more, damn it,” Gates said. “The more farmers we have, the more homesteads, the better off he will be.”

  “But . . .” Murden could not finish. He had to mop his brow.

  “He did not say what he had in mind?” Yost asked.

  “No,” Monroe replied. “He just said—as I’ve already told you—something about personal or federal. Then he walked out.”

  They thought this over in silence. O’Rourke frowned, and said, “He still isn’t interested in getting rid of that lousy ex-Reb Slade?”

  “He has other plans for Slade, Paddy,” Gates said. “You know that.”

  “Slade will likely wind up hanging for what we do,” Murden said.

  “What I do, you mean,” O’Rourke corrected. “Because all of you know that’s why you invited me into your sorry little plan.”

  Another few minutes of quiet passed before Monroe tried to convince the other aldermen of his bravery. “I got the trading post burned.”

  Again, O’Rourke spit. “You mean you sent your darky to burn it down.”

  “Where is Harker anyway?” Gates asked.

  “He’s not privy to this,” O’Rourke said.

  “It’ll get us more business,” Monroe said, trying to explain another one of his reasons for burning down Reno’s trading post. “With him out of the picture.”

  “Out of the picture.” O’Rourke’s head bobbed. “Yes, that brings up another question. What is to become of that one-eyed old reprobate?”

  Monroe wet his lips, and touched the burn mark on his neck again. “Well, it means that Jed Reno will have to die, too. I guess.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “What do you think?” Colter asked.

  Jed Reno stood in the edge of the burned-over range, closer to the town of Violence than the ruins of the old trapper’s trading post.

  The big man fingered some ash, and then crept out of the blackened earth to the grass that waved in the wind.

  “One fellow,” Reno finally answered. “Looks like.”

  Tim Colter had to smile in amazement. “You can tell . . . after a day . . . and after all those railroaders came to help put out that fire. You can tell this is the trail made by the man who set your building on fire.”

  Glaring, the one-eyed trapper turned on his moccasins. “You questioning my talents?”

  “That wasn’t a question, pard. Just a statement.”

  “Most of the railroaders come by one of them little cars that they have to pump to make go.” He crouched again, fingering the grass. “Seems like a lot of work to get someplace.” He moved forward. “Yeah, only one.” He stood again and pointed southward. “Swung wide. That way. On the way back to town.”

  “So he wouldn’t be spotted,” Colter said. That, too, was not a question.

  They had started that morning at the ruins, seeing if they might have missed anything right after the fire. Not looking for sign of the person who set the fire, but for any valuables, or a blanket, anything, that they could use. This was the West, and people recycled anything they could. Even some of the rafters and logs, charred and ruined and practically worthless, would come in handy for someone—somehow, sometime—most likely. Yet, the fire had been brutal, fueled by coal oil and whiskey.

  “You lost everything, didn’t you?” Colter had asked.

  Jed Reno shook his head. “Got my Colt. Better yet, got my Hawken. Got my horse and saddle.” Then he pointed to the dirt beyond the house. “And my bank.”

  “Bank?”

  “Money, boy. Put coins and bank notes and script and gold and silver in jars. You wouldn’t notice it by looking at me, but I’m a wealthy man. By Violence’s standards.”

  Then Jed Reno’s one eye had found something. Something anyone else would have dismissed—even if they had noticed it. That came with living in the mountains long before anyone ever dreamed of a Pony Express company, or telegraphs that could bring news from San Francisco to New York City, or a railroad track that would link the Pacific
with the Atlantic. It came because mountain men knew to pay close attention to every single detail. If something looked out of place, that could mean death. Jed Reno had survived close to fifty years in this country by observing things. Ordinary things that were not so ordinary, but aroused one’s suspicions.

  “What is it?” Colter had asked.

  The old man pointed at a heel print in the sand. Just a heel print. Even Tim Colter would have shrugged it off.

  “A boot?” Colter had asked.

  Reno’s head had moved sideways, and he had started following the trail.

  “Can you follow it?” Colter now asked. “All the way to wherever he came from?”

  Reno chuckled. “Well, not to his mama’s place, where the son of a bitch was born. No. I can’t follow the trail that far. But I can find out where he went to.”

  The track had been from a shoe. Not a boot. The railroad workers wore work boots. Colter wore riding boots. Jed Reno wore moccasins. And the print had been fresh, left the day of the fire. Reno could tell. He could tell that the man was small, fast on his feet, and probably left-handed.

  “His tracks will get mixed up, once he hits town,” Colter said. “A shoe worn by a city man won’t be so rare, once you reach town.”

  “Rare enough.” The mountain man’s head shook. “Every track’s different. Just like every man’s different. Besides, Violence ain’t Louisville, boy. Ain’t even Bowling Green. And this boy, him running off that way, so he wouldn’t be seen. That’s all right for some eyewitness. But he was going where there won’t be too many folks moving about. So, yeah, I can find out where he went to. Exactly. Iffen that’s what you want me to do.”

  “I do.”

  “Then should I kill the . . . what’s that you called him?”

  “An arsonist.”

  “Yeah. Want me to kill him?”

  Colter shook his head. “Don’t even knock on the door, Jed. All we need right now is to find out who torched your place. Just find that out. Then meet me back at the jail.”

  Colter walked back toward his horse. “We’ll kill him later. But only if we have to.”

  * * *

  When Colter walked back to the unfinished building that would serve as his office, he found a young man with long brown hair standing by the hitching rail, holding the reins to the horse, watching Mix Range sweep the dirt, grass, sawdust, and spiders from the unfinished building. He was a lean, leathery man, probably still in his twenties, dressed in well-worn riding boots with big Mexican spurs, woolen pants with the seats and inside of the thighs reinforced with dark leather, a bib-front shirt of red and black checks, a yellow neckerchief, and a high-crowned brown hat.