The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  He wet his cracked lips with his tongue. He had a few patches of stubble on his chin and cheeks, but Colter doubted if the boy could have grown a beard, or even a mustache, in two or three years.

  The youth was probably staring at the Oregon Boot that the prisoner turned carpenter still wore, but Colter walked to him warily. He had never seen this kid before, and even boys who couldn’t grow beards could kill a man.

  “Help you?” Colter asked. His right hand stayed near the LeMat, even if the boy wore no gun. A Spencer carbine was sheathed in the saddle scabbard, and just because Colter spotted no six-shooter on the kid’s hip did not mean the boy didn’t have a hideaway pistol somewhere.

  “What’s on that fella’s ankle?” the kid said in a thick Texas twang.

  “A Gardner Shackle,” Colter answered. “Sometimes called an Oregon Boot.”

  “Strangest thing I ever seen on a man before.” The kid led the horse, a small brown mare, to the rail, wrapping the reins around the end, and stepping onto the boardwalk. Colter was heading to the door, figuring that the kid had learned all he needed to know and was about to find a saloon.

  “You’re the new marshal, ain’t you?” the kid asked.

  Colter looked at him. The boy seemed harmless enough.

  “Yeah.”

  He never saw the punch that knocked him a good two feet backward.

  Colter came up, reaching for the LeMat, but the boy just stood there, sucking on his skinned knuckles. Colter shook some senses back into his head. Mix Range had stopped sweeping, and stuck his head between the studs. The long-haired point lowered both hands, spreading them away from his hips.

  “Now, Marshal,” he said in that slow drawl. “You see here that I ain’t packin’ no hogleg. This is what we call a friendly fight.”

  “Don’t think I’ve ever been in one of those.” Colter pulled himself to his feet. How could a thin whippersnapper like the boy punch like a sledgehammer?

  “Well . . . it’s just my way of introducin’ myself to the new lawman. Let him see who’s boss.” He grinned. For a fighter, he had all of his teeth. Stained by tobacco juice. Not straight. But all there.

  “Did you introduce yourself to B.B. Cutter?” Colter unbuckled his gunbelt, shot a glance at Mix Range, but decided the big shackle would stop him from staggering out of the building and running for the LeMat. He laid it on a cracker barrel in front of Jasper Monroe’s barbershop/undertaking parlor.

  “No, suh. My pa raised me better than go assaultin’ women, or fellas who don’t know how to defend ’emselves. You ready, Marshal? Or you need another minute or two to collect yerself.”

  “I’m ready,” Colter said.

  The kid’s face turned into a blank. “Huh?” he said—a second before Tim Colter’s right slammed into the boy’s jaw.

  The punch flipped the kid over the hitching rail, causing his horse to snort, pull away, and snap the reins. The boy was pushing himself to his knees when Colter leaped, slamming his shoulder into the kid’s chest. By then, the horse had galloped down Union Street, heading for the corral.

  Colter rolled over, came up, sensing the boy more than seeing him, leaping over the boy’s boots as he drew back and kicked with both legs. Colter landed, turned, saw the boy launching himself from his back, into the air, landing on his feet, bending at the knees, then coming up in a charge.

  The right Colter managed to deflect with his forearm. The left counter grazed over Colter’s shoulder when he ducked and threw a short uppercut that missed. That left him open, but Colter absorbed two quick but harmless punches into his upper arm. He backed up. Blinked sweat.

  The kid turned, punched, leaving his left side open. Colter slammed hard. One-two-three. One-two. Fake. Jab. Haymaker that knocked the boy’s hat off. But Colter didn’t stop. He spun, bringing up his leg, knocking into the boy’s side, and slamming him toward the hitching rail. Colter took a moment to find Mix Range. And the LeMat. Both remained where he had last seen them, and the only difference was that Range’s mouth hung open in amazement.

  Colter looked back, almost too late. The punch caught him right against the ear as he turned his head. Colter grunted, fell back, but faked a spin to his right, and turned left instead. The boy shot past him. By the time the kid had recovered, Colter was in a defensive stance, waiting, hands up, elbows down, rocking the arms like the pistons on one of those steam-powered engines.

  The kid wiped blood off his nose. He grinned.

  Colter smiled back. He had done more damage than he thought. The kid’s smile now revealed a missing tooth.

  Both charged at the same time, but Colter lowered his head, then jerked it up, and caught the kid in the jaw. The boy’s head snapped back, hard, ugly—almost knotting Colter’s stomach with fear that he had broken the boy’s neck. A quick punch that split Colter’s lips told him that was not the case.

  Now it was Tim Colter moving backward, driven across Union Street by the boy’s wicked blows. Colter fell to his knees and hands, and let the boy carry himself over with momentum. The kid hit with a grunt, and then Colter was on top of him. Now Colter had an advantage. He outweighed the boy. He slammed a right into the boy’s nose, felt the cartilage give way, felt the warm blood. He sank his buttocks deep against the kid’s stomach. He hit again. Again. Again. The boy turned limp. Colter pushed himself up, staggered toward the nearest watering trough, and dipped his head in the water. Once. Twice. Three times.

  When he turned around, his chest was heaving; pain was shooting throughout his body; he tasted blood with salty sweat, the dirt of the street, the filth of a horse’s watering trough in a town like Violence.

  Colter managed to blink until his vision finally focused. The LeMat and the holster remained on the cracker barrel. Mix Range still stared through the two-by-four studs. The boy still lay in the center of Union Street.

  Only now, the kid had company. Two men, who looked a lot like the boy, stood at the boy’s boots and long hair. Another older man knelt beside the kid, calling out his name.

  “Levi. You all right, boy? Can you hear me, Levi?” The old man also spoke with that twang.

  The two younger men aimed six-shooters at Colter’s belly.

  CHAPTER 25

  Slowly the old man pushed himself to his feet, while the young boy in the dirt managed to mumble something before he came up on his hands and knees, and vomited. The man backed away from the mess, looked at Colter, and, to Colter’s astonishment, laughed.

  “First time Levi’s ever been whupped, Marshal. How’d you manage that?”

  Colter shook the water out of his hair. Wet his lips. Tested his teeth with his tongue. To his surprise, his seemed to still be in their proper place.

  “I cheated.” Colter tried to surmise what chance he would have at dashing across the street, diving over the hitching rail, snatching the LeMat out of the holster, and shooting the three newcomers. And maybe Levi if he had to.

  Zero.

  But maybe he wouldn’t have to.

  “Don’t blame you.” The man laughed again. He had covered the distance between Levi and Colter now and held out his right hand. “Would’ve done the same myself. Name’s Warren, Marshal. Clint Warren. Got a spread a ways south of this town.” He tilted his head. “These are my sons. Brod—short for Broderick—and Tyrone, short for nothin’. You’ve already made the acquaintance of my youngest, Levi. Pleased to know you.”

  Colter accepted the handshake, firm, solid, hard as the iron rails of the U.P. line. The old man turned around, and snapped, “Brod. Put that Colt away, boy. You, too, Tyrone. Tyrone, you help your kid brother over here. Get him washed up. And you, Brod, get mounted and go fetch your brother’s horse. While the marshal and me get acquainted our ownselves.”

  “Like Levi and I got acquainted?” Colter asked.

  The old man laughed. “Shucks, no, Marshal. I do my meetin’s and gettin’s-to-knows-yous with whiskey. Rye whiskey. And not what they call rye in one of those god-awful saloons in this town. Carry
a good bottle with me. Brod, when you’ve got that horse, bring the marshal and me my rye. Would you do that fer me, son?”

  * * *

  Clint Warren stood about six-four, maybe 220 pounds without his boots on. Or his pistols. Although he hailed from Texas, he had fought for the Union. Colter had heard of such men, and that Texas, like Tennessee and other states that withdrew from the Union, had pockets where most of the citizens remained staunch Unionists. By Jupiter, that’s why there was a new state of West Virginia. Before the war, that part of the Old Dominion had been within the boundaries of Virginia. But the residents petitioned for admittance into the Union. Virginia, and the Confederacy, had lost a sizable chunk of land—and some citizens who could have been conscripted into the Confederate Army. Not that the boys in gray would have wanted those Unionists fighting alongside them.

  Colter had already sized up the youngest of Warren’s sons. After all, for such a slender sort, Levi Warren packed quite the wallop. Colter had not run into many cowboys. Sure, there were ranches in Oregon, but most of those lay east of the Willamette Valley, where he had first settled. He had read some wild and woolly tales in newspapers and magazines about Abilene, Kansas, and those Texas cowboys. He wondered if all cowhands were like Levi Warren.

  Brod, the oldest, looked more like a prizefighter, or wannabe pugilist, than Levi. He was big, even taller than his old man, in tall boots with 2½-inch heels. He wore chaps, and a pistol stuck in his waistband—no holster. His shirt was collarless, his vest frayed, stained, and torn, with the string from a sack of Bull Durham hanging out of the one pocket that hadn’t been ripped off his vest. Broderick also had a thick mustache, and his nose seemed crooked from so many fistfights. Maybe Colter was lucky. He could have had to tangle with Brod Warren.

  Tyrone seemed the odd man out among the Warrens. Both the old man and two of the sons looked like the drawings of cowboys that Colter had seen in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Saturday Evening Post, and Harper’s Weekly. Tyrone looked more like a man who belonged behind the faro layouts at Paddy O’Rourke’s Blarney Stone. He wore black-striped britches that stuck inside shiny black boots, and the rowels of the spurs on his heels were tiny compared to the big stars on the other Warren men. He also wore a bright blue shirt in a silk material, with mother-of-pearl buttons and a fancy brocade vest of red, black, and green. His shirt had a paper collar, and a long string tie, also black, hung down to the buttons of his vest. His hat, however, was white, wide-brimmed with a low crown. His pistols were what struck Colter most about Tyrone Warren. Two nickel-plated guns, with ivory grips, holstered butt forward for cross-draws.

  That told Colter that Tyrone Warren would be the one to watch. Levi and Brod used their fists when they tangled with a man. Tyrone must have preferred the two Remington .44s he carried.

  Yet, Colter also understood something else about this clan of Texas Unionists. They would not fight . . . without their father’s blessing. So the old man was the one to pay attention to . . . and the old man must have known that Levi was coming to town to tangle with the new lawman.

  So Clint Warren and Tim Colter sat in chairs on the boardwalk in front of the unfinished building, talking about this and that. More of a getting-to-know-you kind of talk. The old Texan sipped rye. Colter thought it too early in the day to be partaking of intoxicating spirits, so he merely applied the whiskey on his cuts and bruises. It burned like the hinges of Hell, but it would help Colter more than whiskey in his belly.

  “My boys are a bit on the wild side,” Clint Warren said, “but they’re good boys. You gonna charge Levi for that little row y’all had?”

  Colter’s head shook. He could tell that the rancher seemed worried, and maybe he had good reason. Assaulting a federal peace officer could send young Levi Warren to the federal pen at Fort Leavenworth for at least a year.

  “Well, it was a bit harmless,” Warren said with relief.

  Colter turned and gave the old man a hard stare. “Not sure I’d call it harmless.”

  The two men smiled.

  “Marshal, I might as well let you know something right now.” Warren’s tone turned serious, and even the drawl almost disappeared. “I’ve got two thousand head of Texas longhorns trailing up here. Mixed stock. Some bulls. Mostly heifers and steers.”

  “That’s a lot of beef.”

  The rancher nodded. “Well, this is a big country.”

  “Where do you plan on grazing your herd?” Colter asked.

  “This land’s open range, suh. That’s the way of things in cattle country.”

  He went on to talk about the changes going on down in Texas and Kansas. The Civil War had given Easterners and Northerners a taste for beef. Cattle had been practically worthless down in Texas, but ranchers and plenty of out-of-work ex-Rebels, not to mention recently freed slaves, found jobs pushing cattle to Kansas or Missouri. Towns like Sedalia, Baxter Springs, and Abilene boomed. A steer worth three dollars in Texas could fetch upward of forty bucks in Abilene. The West had suddenly found a new form of business. Ranching. And it was becoming big business.

  “We’re a long way from Kansas, though,” Colter pointed out.

  “Well, it’s not just Kansas these days,” Clint Warren explained. “Back in ’66, a cattleman I know, just a bit, named Charles Goodnight and another man named Oliver Loving took a herd west. For the most part, they followed the old Butterfield line from around Fort Belknap in Texas to Horsehead Crossin’ on the Pecos River. Then took the herd up the Pecos all the way to Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo. You’ve heard of it?”

  “Just what I’ve read,” Colter explained. “Reservation for the Navajo down in New Mexico Territory, or something like that. Right?”

  Warren nodded. “And Mescalero Apache.”

  After dabbing the last cut with whiskey, Colter again pointed out that New Mexico Territory might be as far away as Abilene, Kansas, from the town of Violence.

  “But they pushed up farther north. Past Raton Pass and into the Colorado country. They did that just last year. This year, Goodnight, or maybe it was Loving, decided to get going. Signed a contract with a guy named Iliff, to bring beef to the U.P. boys in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”

  Colter nodded. “A steak . . . a real beefsteak . . . would hit the spot, I guess, after nothing but antelope and jackrabbit.”

  “You come to my home, ol’ hoss. . . .” The drawl had returned. “You come with me, anytime, and my boys—their wives, I mean—will fry you up a steak three inches thick that weighs five pounds.”

  “I’d be at your place a week trying to finish it.”

  The rancher laughed. “I’ll put you up in the bunkhouse till you’ve cleaned off the bone, son.”

  He cleared his throat and explained. “I got a crew followin’ Goodnight’s trail to Cheyenne. Then they’ll cut over, or maybe before, and head to Violence.” He lowered his voice. “I’d like to give you fair warnin’, hoss. Cowboys . . . after three or four months herdin’ cattle, when they hit town, they can be cantankerous. They be doin’ it just for fun, you see. Not tryin’ to hurt nobody, but you mix whiskey with young kids, and them kids are carryin’ Colt’s six-shooters, and, well, things can get wild and woolly. That’s something you might ought to remember, Marshal.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “Good.” The rancher sipped more whiskey, and then corked the bottle. The conversation was over. He started to rise, but Tim Colter stopped him with a look.

  “Two thousand head of cattle, Mr. Warren. That’s a lot of beef.”

  “It ain’t nothin’. Not really. Not yet.” He gestured toward the ranges that swept all across Clear Creek and the territory. “Good grass. Sweet water. The Union Pacific did me a good favor, though. Hirin’ hunters to feed all them workers layin’ track. Shootin’ of the buffalo. And sendin’ the game north and south, away from the rails. Yes, sir. They’ve helped turn this land into cattle country. And that’s what it’s gonna be. Cattle. Open range. So, yeah, I’m bringin’ in two thousa
nd cattle, but I won’t be done. Not by a damned sight. Next year, I’ll bring in more. And the year after, more. My claims will grow. Because I was the one who got here first. You just wait and see, Marshal. And don’t worry. You’ll be eatin’ beefsteaks free. That I’ll promise you. On account that you deserve it. Because you’re cleanin’ up this town. Which is what we need.”

  “Well, there is just one thing, Mr. Warren–”

  “Call me Clint, boy. Call me Clint.”

  “Well . . .” Colter breathed in deeply, and slowly exhaled. He looked the old man squarely in his eyes. “You’ve got the claims for some land. You . . . and your three sons. But others have claims here, too. I’m talking about the farmers. They’ve filed their claims, paid their fees, started their homesteads. Legal claims. Not open range. I don’t want any trouble between you and those farmers.”

  Colter grinned. He decided any chance he had of eating steaks for free for the rest of his life had just ended. Clint Warren was a man who was used to getting his way. And now the rancher had just learned that Tim Colter, with a federal commission for the territory and a town job as lawman, stood in his way.

  CHAPTER 26

  Clint Warren’s face hardened. He sank back onto the chair, but leaned forward. Now he whispered. Now he did not force the drawl that made him sound so friendly.

  “Those sodbusters won’t last, Marshal. This is cattle country. You know that. I know that. And after a drought or a hard winter or a Cheyenne raid, them foreigners will be hightailin’ it back all the way to Belgium.”

  “When they do,” Colter pointed out, “you’ll have the opportunity to buy their claims. Until then, I don’t think your cattle should be straying onto their wheat fields.”