The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “Which they will never make,” Warren snapped.

  “And you know that. And I know that. But until those families from Belgium know that, I have to follow the law. And the law’s with them.”

  Warren started talking, but Colter had found something that interested him more. Jed Reno was walking around the corner, coming from the north side. He saw Warren and paused, then studied the bruises and cuts on Colter’s face. His hard eye turned sharply to Clint Warren, but the mountain man found no signs of injuries on the old man’s face.

  “It was Levi,” Colter said.

  Reno nodded.

  “Any luck?” Colter asked.

  The old trapper shook his head. “Lost the trail. Boy got smart. Come to the U.P. line and walked along the rails and crossties. Not much of a chance for me to pick it up after that.”

  “Trail?” Warren asked.

  “Looking for the man who torched Jed’s trading post,” Colter said. And he said nothing else.

  “Yeah,” Warren said, turning to study Jed Reno. “Heard what happened. Sorry to hear that, ol’ hoss. You gonna rebuild?”

  “We’ll see. For now, I’ll just keep my traps clean. And my Hawken loaded.”

  With a grunt, Clint Warren pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll keep my cattle on grazing land that ain’t bein’ claimed by any ignorant sodbuster who can’t even speak good English. Till they flee for their grandmam-mies and grandpappies and hurry back to where they belong. That suit you?”

  Colter nodded.

  “You see where my boys went?” the old man asked.

  Mix Range replied, “To The Cheyenne Saloon.”

  The rancher chuckled. “Well, I’d better cut them off before Tyrone or Brod decide they’d like to see if they can tackle the man who killed Stewart Rose. I wish you good luck, Marshal. I’ll keep my boys in line. My sons, I mean. Might not have no control when those waddies of mine come in from Texas.”

  “I’ll take care of your waddies, Mr. Warren.” Colter shook the old man’s hand, and watched him walk to his horse, tethered to the hitching rail. He swung into the saddle like a man thirty years younger, and started walking the animal east toward the saloon.

  “But, Mr. Warren,” Colter called out.

  The man stopped his horse. The leather of the saddle squeaked as he turned to face the marshal.

  “When do you expect those men to be here?”

  “July be my guess,” Warren answered. “You take care of yourself. You, too, Reno.”

  They watched him go, and then Reno squatted in the dirt in front of Colter.

  “Must’ve been a good fight,” Reno said with a wicked grin. “Plumb sorry I missed it. He whup you?”

  “Would have. But I sort of... cheated.”

  The grin turned more wicked. “I taught you well.”

  “He beat the tar out of young Levi,” Mix Range said. “I thought you was gonna kill him, sure as shootin’.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Colter said.

  “Your face,” Reno said, “begs to differ from that statement.”

  * * *

  When he could speak without hurting too much, Tim Colter talked more with Jed Reno about the trail. The man who set the fire had been fairly smart. Swung wide around the south edge of town, then cut down Third Street all the way to the railroad tracks north of Union Street. That’s where Reno lost the trail.

  “It could’ve been anybody.”

  Reno and Colter turned to stare at Mix Range, who had joined in on the conversation without an invitation.

  “Not anybody. City gent. That leaves out most of the gamblers at The Blarney Stone and the barkeeps and gunmen at Slade’s Saloon.”

  “And the whores,” Mix Range said.

  “Leaves out Murden,” Colter said. “He’s too fat.”

  “And his pard, Gates.” Reno pointed at his eye patch. “Them spectacles he wears. Couldn’t see. And he ain’t got the sand.”

  “Nor would the guy from the hotel, Yost,” Colter said.

  “So that leaves . . . ?” Reno turned to stare at the building next door. “The mayor?”

  “Nah.” Again, Mix Range answered. “I seen him. He was runnin’ to The Blarney Stone when all that was goin’ on. Besides, he wears boots.” Range picked up the broom and limped back inside the building, to start sweeping again.

  “Well,” Reno said. “You got a lot of folks to keep an eye on. Could be the man who done it just sent some ol’ boy to burn my place down. And I’d pay more attention to them boys who come here with guns than them with matches.”

  “What do you think of Clint Warren?” Colter asked.

  “One of his boys bought a calendar from my place. Paid a whole dime for it. That’s about all I know of him. You think he’s a friend?”

  Colter, to his surprise, found his head shaking. “I don’t think a father, any father, would befriend the man who just whipped his son in a fistfight. And he and those farmers will be fighting over land before long.”

  His lips started hurting again.

  “There’s one thing he said that troubles me, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  Colter didn’t get a chance to answer. Some drunk was shooting out the windows at The Railroaders Lounge.

  * * *

  It had not been like this in Oregon, even when Colter had taken the lawman’s job in the mining camps. Even as a federal lawman for the entire district, Tim Colter had been able to sleep. Relax. Sometimes during those times off, far west of Violence, Tim Colter had even walked around without his six-shooter strapped on his hip.

  The drunk was easy enough. Tim Colter came into the saloon with his LeMat in his hand. The drunk turned, dropped the empty Remington on the floor, and charged, swinging punches blindly, yelling that he would rip off the badge—which Colter was not wearing—and make him eat it. Colter swung the revolver, and down went the drunk.

  Maybe a five-pound Oregon Boot. And a week in the corral, doing odd jobs. After all, the windows in The Railroaders Lounge would have to be replaced. To keep the dust out. Before winter returned.

  * * *

  Mix Range had been such a good hand with the fire, and that broom, that Tim Colter, Deputy U.S. Marshal and Marshal of Violet, Idaho Territory, rewarded the Alamo gunman. He left the thirty-pound Gardner Shackle in the canvas sack, then put one on Range that weighed only fifteen pounds. Range, showing ever the Southern graciousness, even thanked him.

  The town of Violence wasn’t populated with only thugs and heartless souls. The baker and his wife brought a tarp, which they nailed up on the studs to make a wall that would stop most of the west wind. A few other merchants came with blankets; one brought a chair; and before two more days had passed, there was a traveling table, one used by officers during the late War to Preserve the Union, and a gun case. Everyone seemed to come to bring something. Even the waitress from the café brought food and coffee over, after the rush for breakfast, the rush for dinner, and any leftovers that wouldn’t keep till morning, after supper. Everyone dropped by.

  “Everyone,” Colter corrected when Jed Reno was looking to find a likely spot to place a spittoon the owner of Jake’s Place had donated. “Except the carpenters.”

  Reno sat down. He scratched his beard.

  “Who owns this place?” Colter asked.

  Reno could only shrug.

  “We could go over to the land office, ask Mr. Yost. But I’d bet he’d tell us it was owned by one Jasper Monroe.”

  “You reckon?”

  “I reckon.”

  Colter wiped his mouth. Breakfast was passable this morning. He listened. Sure enough, even though the sun was barely up, the saw was whirring at what passed for a sawmill in this part of the country. Hammers struck nails. Other handsaws—like the one Colter had left with Micah Slade—cut two-by-four studs or wooden planks. Violence was still growing. But no carpenters were working on this building.

  “When’s the last time you saw someone working on this place?”
Colter asked Jed Reno.

  But it was Mix Range who answered. “Day before you put that boot on me. The real big, heavy one.”

  Colter and Reno both turned to look at the killer, who sopped up the gravy with his fingers, and stuck those fingers in his mouth to suck. Finished, he wiped his hands on his trousers and looked at the walls, which were studs—unless you counted the canvas tarp.

  “You’re starting to grow on me, Mix,” Colter said. “That worries me.”

  “Well,” the outlaw said, “you’re growin’ on me, too. Maybe it’s on account that I respect men who beats me. And you’s beat me.”

  “How did you turn out so bad, son?” Jed Reno asked.

  “Things happen. They just happen.”

  Tim Colter could relate to that. He was destined to be a gentleman farmer, married with a brood of kids, growing crops in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Just one of a myriad farmers who came, settled the country, made the country grow. A man who would do his job, and do it well, but never be known for anything, or as anything, outside of his farm and his church and maybe the county that he called home.

  But things happen. Maybe for a reason. Maybe because of fate. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . things just happened. Tim Colter had survived a wagon train massacre—by luck or by God’s intervention. Stubbornly he had set out to do something that should have left him dead. He had met Jed Reno. He had learned to survive. And that experience, more than twenty years ago, had changed Tim Colter. Changed his life. Changed the path he thought he was supposed to take.

  Instead, he had become a lawman. And he had set off after an outlaw named Stewart Rose, who had come into the state of Oregon for some crazy reason that only Stewart Rose had known. A vacation, perhaps? To get away from the heat down in Texas and Kansas and a few other places. Tim Colter had found the outlaw and his gang. Or maybe Stewart Rose had found Tim Colter. No matter. Once again, Tim Colter had survived. He had killed. That’s one thing Tim Colter had become good at. Surviving. Killing.

  His legend had grown. And now he was in a town known as Violence. With a one-eyed mountain man who had trained him, taught him, and mentored him. And with an uneducated Southern killer and thief whom, for some crazy reason, Tim Colter had started to like.

  “You know,” Mix Range said, “my daddy built houses and stores back in Alabama. I helped him for a couple of years. Afore I decided that a six-shooter fit my hand better than a ball-peen hammer. But I was a fair to middlin’ carpenter, I think. Get some wood. Some nails. A saw. I bet I could finish this here office for you.” He nodded at his assessment, before another thought struck him. “Reckon I’d need a ladder, too. And a level. Some pencils. Miter box if you can find one. I don’t know. You reckon you want windows in this place?”

  He gestured toward a room in the back, like the rest of the building, set off by two-by-four studs. “And that there place. I bet it would make a fine jail cell. But you’d need some iron cages for it, Marshal.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Peace came, ever so briefly, to Violence, Idaho Territory.

  Oh, the corral always had at least a half-dozen drunks lying on the grass or the mud, but usually Tim Colter didn’t even have to put an Oregon Boot on those old railroad boys or carpenters. Usually, he just escorted them to the pen, opened the gate, and watched them stagger inside. Sometimes he had fun with them, telling them to go to the corner. The corral was round. But they’d give up quickly, sit down, fall down, and start snoring. A few others he had to drag to the corral, and a couple he had to crack over the head with the LeMat’s barrel or butt. He didn’t bother fining them. Just let them sleep it off in the corral, and then they would wake up—eventually—although they might not quite have sobered up, but they could walk, or stagger, back to their homes, tents, or jobs. Or take the trail they’d been traveling before stopping off for whiskey, poker, and women.

  One big gent who worked at the sawmill did get a shackle on his left ankle, but that was because he had been so drunk, he took a crowbar and tried to tear up the tracks laid by the U.P. workers last fall. That one had to pay a fine and spend six weeks in jail. Or get off on good behavior and no fine if he helped Mix Range finish the carpentry work when he knocked off work at his regular job, and on his one day off, a Sunday. It wasn’t like he would be spending that day in church. There was no church in Violence.

  “Is that how all deputy marshals do things?” Jed Reno asked.

  “What’s that?” Colter said.

  “I don’t know. Law and all that stuff I never paid much mind to. Just seemed to recall that a lawman like yourself did the peacekeeping, but it was some hifalutin judge who handed down the sentences, told folks how much they’d have to pay, or how many nights they’d have to spend in the calaboose, or when they’d be going to prison for so long, or what day they’d be hanged by the neck till they was dead, dead, dead.”

  Colter shrugged. “Let him appeal.”

  Reno scratched his beard. “Huh?”

  * * *

  The U.P. trains brought more settlers, and more railroad men, more iron rails and wooden beams and everything else men needed for this massive venture. Express riders, however, brought most of the mail.

  This wasn’t the Pony Express, that short-lived venture that had ceased running in the autumn of 1861 with the completion of the telegraph lines. No, other companies had formed, but running shorter routes. The Wells, Fargo & Company, “carriers of the Overland Mail,” had taken over the business founded by Russell, Majors, and Waddell, and Ben Holladay was the king of the company, getting passengers, mail, and money delivered from Missouri and as far west as Sacramento, California, with stops in Omaha and Denver and to Salt Lake City, Utah. Other lines ran from Salt Lake or Denver or Sacramento to Virginia City and Helena in Montana, to Boise City in Idaho Territory. Then express riders would carry mail to other places, such as Cheyenne or Laramie City or even Violence, Idaho Territory. The letters from Boise were addressed to Deputy Marshal Tim Colter, but those were just wanted dodgers and other information, and a paycheck for his monthly services. Of course, while there was a bank in Violence, Custer could count to ten. And since no one was dumb enough to cash a check, Colter merely put the checks in the jar that Jed Reno brought in and kept buried, somewhere, behind the ruins of his trading post and dugout.

  There were other letters, too, and those Tim read often. Somehow Betsy McDonnell had forgiven him. They had called off their wedding. She said she would wait till he finished the job. He wrote her back. She wrote him. He wrote. She wrote. It was a nice break from the violence in Violence.

  June came and went. Tim Colter thought about that wedding date that also came, and passed, with no wedding, with no Betsy McDonnell; yet her letters came, and she sounded happy, content, and still willing to wait. July came. Clint Warren’s cattle, however, did not come yet. Neither Tim Colter nor Jed Reno was saddened by that. Cowboys . . . railroaders . . . and the bloodsuckers who feasted on a town like Violence—that could be a lethal gathering.

  Violence and the Union Pacific celebrated Independence Day. Colter wasn’t sure what the Flemish farmers and their families thought about the fireworks and the horse races and all the food, but they seemed to accept it. They loved the fireworks, and, in a rare moment in this town, the fireworks were actual skyrockets and Roman candles and firecrackers. No one drew a revolver or pulled a trigger that day—at least not inside the limits of the town Murden and Gates had platted. It turned out to be one of the most peaceful days in the city’s history.

  Which had to be one for the history books.

  The wind blew hot. Peace came to Violence, more or less. Even the corral held only one or two drunks each night. Sodbusters came to see Jed Reno, shocked and saddened that his trading post was no longer anything but a place for pack rats and spiders. They asked about the money they owed the one-eyed ex–fur trapper.

  “Them records burned in that fire. Don’t know how much you owe. So I reckon that means you don’t owe me a thing.”


  But you could not tell that to a person who had left Belgium with his family, or come alone, to start a new life in America. To farm. To build this country. They replaced the café that had no name—nor much in the way of good cooking—and brought dumplings and apple fritters and good coffee and fine bread. They almost tried to make Tim Colter fat.

  “This could be a nice place to live,” Mix Range said as he shoved the last fritter into his mouth.

  Colter stared. The walls were up; the drunken carpenter had long since finished his obligation, and had gone back to work at the sawmill. Mix Range no longer wore the fifteen-pound Oregon Boot, but a tenpounder, and half the time Tim Colter forgot to lock that on the killer’s ankle after he climbed down off the roof. The original roof leaked, but Mix Range had patched that up. The door often dragged on the floor, but Range swore he would get around to finishing it. But first he wanted to get the jail set, but the iron bars and the heavy jail door had yet to make it on the train from Omaha. So Mix Range busied himself with minor things. He didn’t sleep in the corral at nights. As always, he sat in the room that, eventually, would be the jail.

  The express rider brought more letters, and Tim Colter was reading the latest from Betsy McDonnell when the farmers came into town. This wasn’t the usual delegation. Women only came on the last Saturday of the month, and when they came, they did their shopping while the men gathered around and drank coffee and pointed to the sky and asked about the weather. Or so Tim Colter thought. He didn’t understand most of what they said.

  On this afternoon, the women gathered in front of the lawman’s office. One of them had been appointed to speak, since she had some grasp of the English tongue. So Tim Colter, Jed Reno, and Mix Range stood on the boardwalk and listened.

  “A schoolteacher?” Colter asked when the woman had finished her talk and stepped back into the sea of brown poplin dresses and bunned hair.

  “Ja.” The heads of the ladies bobbed in unison.