The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  “Well, I don’t know,” Colter said. This wasn’t what he had expected. The woman told to speak spoke again, and Colter managed to grasp that the sodbusters had maybe two dozen kids who needed to learn how to talk in English, to do math in English, to read in English, to count in English, and to be regular Americans.

  “I see.” Colter looked at Jed Reno and Mix Range for help, but realized that was pointless.

  One woman pushed her way from the back of the crowd until she appeared through an opening. Most of the farmwives were dressed in brown poplin dresses, but she wore black: a black dress, black boots, a black veil, which she lifted with rough hands. Her face was gaunt, and her eyes, bloodshot from tears, were sunk deep in her head. Most of the women’s faces had been burned by sun and rain, but this woman seemed pale. Her eyes sought out Tim Colter, but did not register, and they finally locked on Jed Reno.

  The woman started out from the designated speakers. One woman reached for her, but the lady in black brushed the hand aside, then spoke something sharply in a language that Colter could not understand.

  “Mr. Reno,” she said when she stopped a few feet in front of the old fur trapper.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Mrs. Slootmaekers.” Jed Reno’s head bowed, and the tough old bird stared down at his moccasins, unable to hold the old woman’s gaze.

  Old? Colter looked again. No, she wasn’t old. By Jupiter, she might even be younger than Tim Colter himself. She looked ancient, but Mrs. Slootmaekers must have lived one hard life.

  “Our children . . . should learn . . .” She stopped, turned to face her own people, and spoke in their language. A few heads bobbed in agreement; and motivated by this, Mrs. Slootmaekers again looked at Jed Reno. “Should learn,” she repeated, her accent hard, but the English words understandable, “the ways . . . of America.”

  A murmur rose among the farming delegation.

  “We . . . ,” the woman continued, “all of us . . . should know . . . this.”

  Heads nodded in agreement again.

  “Yes’m,” Jed Reno agreed. “It’s a good thing to know, I reckon.”

  “There is . . . no one . . .” She spoke something in what Tim Colter guessed to be Flemish, before continuing on in English. “Nobody . . . will teach . . . can teach . . . in this town.”

  “I reckon that’s true, Mrs. Slootmaekers.”

  “For us . . . to make this . . . our . . . home . . .” Mrs. Slootmaekers suddenly wailed, and almost collapsed. Reno’s lips flattened, but he could not reach out, for some reason that Colter couldn’t quite grasp. The leaders of the delegation ran and grabbed her arms, supporting her. Tim Colter could only blink.

  “My . . . Ferre . . . he . . . he so wanted to learn.... He . . . was . . . a good . . . boy.”

  “Yes’m,” Reno said.

  “You know . . . ,” the woman cried out. “He . . . wanted . . . to be . . . American.”

  “Yes’m.”

  She found some inner strength deep within, and she pulled away from the arms and hands and friends supporting her. Her thin arm raised, and she pointed a bony, callused finger at Jed Reno. “I have . . . no . . .” She had to look away, and regain her composure. “Ferre is . . . gone . . . to God,” Mrs. Slootmaekers said. “We do not . . . want . . . others . . . their sons . . . or daughters . . . to . . . It should not . . . happen.”

  “No, ma’am,” Jed Reno said. “It never should’ve happened.”

  “Ja,” came the echo of the women calling on Marshal Tim Colter. “Ja. Ja. Ja.”

  “School . . . teacher,” Mrs. Slootmaekers said. “We must . . . have one.”

  “Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja.”

  Jed Reno nodded, and now his lone eye locked hard on Tim Colter. In fact, Colter tried to remember if he had ever seen that look on the mountain man’s face. Determined, but deeply saddened . . . and filled with a hurt.

  Colter cleared his throat.

  “I tell you what,” he said, when he realized everyone in the party—including Mrs. Slootmaekers—had turned to stare him down. “I’ll write the marshal in Boise. And I’ll send a letter to the newspaper in Council Bluffs or Omaha. Ask them if they might post an item in the paper, a news story, not an advertisement, where you’d have to pay. See if that gets you any interest. That sound all right?”

  “Ja.” Again the bunned heads nodded as one.

  Colter smiled as he watched them go. Then he and Jed Reno disappeared into his office, the one with the old Civil War table, and now a gun case, and two chairs, and a trash can.

  “What was that about, Jed?” Colter asked.

  Reno decided to brace himself with a snort from the jug he and Mix Range tried to keep hidden from Tim Colter. He wiped his lips, corked the jug, and tossed the stoneware container to Mix Range.

  “That was Mrs. Slootmaekers,” Reno said.

  “I gathered that much.”

  “Her boy was Ferre. Ferre Slootmaekers.”

  Colter waited.

  “He was a good boy,” Reno said.

  Colter remembered then. “The boy,” he said. “The boy who worked for you. The one who everyone said killed Marshal Cutter.”

  Reno sighed, and took back the jug Mix Range had returned to him. The old man started to drink, but shook his head, and slid the jug onto Tim Colter’s desk.

  “He’s also the reason I up and wrote you that letter. Good kid, Ferre was. Good family, I reckon. His death broke that woman’s heart, it did.”

  “I know,” Colter said, and this time the words took some effort. “I know what it’s like, Jed . . . to lose . . . a son.”

  Reno nodded. “I know that. Blue-eyed boy. Spoke pretty good English. Hard worker, he was. Sixteen, I reckon. Yeah, sixteen years old. Gangly kid, but didn’t have no trouble lifting crates and boxes and kegs. He could probably have toted your sack of Oregon Boots and never complained or broke out in a hard, stinky sweat. Hailed from someplace they called Mechelen sometimes, and Dijlestad other times. So I paid him, sent him on his way home, but they say he went into The Blarney Stone. Got drunk. Killed Cutter, and Cutter killed him. I saw him. Well, I saw the both of them, cut down dead, but it’s Ferre—the one who I still see at nights. In my dreams. Shot in his belly, and shot in his throat. So it’s ’cause of young Ferre that I wrote you.”

  “It’s all right, Jed,” Tim Colter said. “I’m glad you wrote me. I’m glad I’m here. And I will write the marshal in Boise City. You’ll get a schoolteacher here. That I promise you and all those sodbusters.”

  * * *

  He wrote, of course, the letter that day. Telling the Idaho territorial marshal what he wanted, and he also wrote a letter to the U.P. brass in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Then he found another piece of paper and an envelope.

  First, Tim Colter read the letter from Betsy and wrote her back. He told her about this day’s visit, and how things had changed for the better in Violet. He even called the town by its right name, not Violence. He told her that maybe peace was finally coming to the town, and that he might be coming home soon. They could be married—if she still wanted that. He rushed through the letter, wanting to get it to the post office before the express rider rode back out with the mail for Denver. The mail did not come to Violet often.

  * * *

  The man who ran the town of Violence came into the office of Mayor Jasper Monroe for a shave and haircut. And he fished a silver coin from his vest pocket to send Eugene Harker on his way to buy a whiskey from Jake’s Place.

  Mayor Jasper Monroe stopped sharpening the razor on the leather strop, and secured the barber’s cloth over the chest and shoulders of the man who ran the town of Violence. He handed the letters that Marshal Tim Colter had dropped off at the post office, which, technically, was not a post office at all, since the city of Violet had yet to apply for one. The mail came, general delivery, to the mercantile. The man who ran the mercantile, and served as the one in charge of the mail, had given the letters to Jasper Monroe without question.

  A leathery ha
nd came out of the cotton covering. “The razor,” the man said.

  Jasper Monroe placed the ivory handle of the straight razor in the man’s hand. He used the blade to slice open the first envelope. Once the letter was out, the man read, pursed his lips, refolded the piece of stationery—the U.P.’s letterhead—and returned it to the envelope. The next envelope and correspondence were treated the same way. The man read, nodded as if in thought, and again returned the letter into the envelope.

  “So the sodbusters want a teacher,” the man said. He looked at the other envelope, and studied it longer before opening it.

  “Won’t the people getting these letters be suspicious?” Mayor Jasper Monroe said. “Opened mail and all.”

  “Glue the envelope. Crumple it. Hell, just gettin’ a letter out of this territory and into the hands of the person it was written to takes a damned miracle. They’ll be happy to have gotten it. Besides, I ain’t be-grudgin’ even no foreign-speakin’ crazy farmer the chance of gettin’ an education. Good thing to have, don’t you reckon?”

  “Yes, sir.” The man withdrew the letter, and handed the razor back to Monroe.

  “Sharpen it. Cuttin’ papers dulls a blade.”

  He read. He chuckled. “Well, this is rather interestin’,” he said, and re-read the letter. “Fetch me a pencil and paper.” Jasper Monroe quickly obeyed, and the man who ran the town of Violence copied the address of one Betsy McDonnell, Bullfrog Café, General Delivery, Salem, Oregon, onto the paper, which he folded and returned to some pocket hidden underneath the cotton covering to protect Monroe’s customers from being covered with hair clippings.

  “I don’t think we’ll need this,” said the man, “but I like to have all of my options covered.” His hand returned to stuff the letter back into the envelope addressed to Betsy McDonnell. “Lather me up, barber. And don’t even think about tryin’ to cut my throat.”

  “I w-wouldn’t do that,” Jasper Monroe stammered.

  “The hell you wouldn’t. You think about it every day.”

  Certainly, Jasper Monroe thought about it, but he also could guess that the man who ran the town of Violence had a pistol underneath that protective sheet of cotton, and would kill Jasper Monroe if his razor nicked cheek or chin. He shaved closely, but carefully, and managed to survive the shaving.

  The man who ran the town of Violence dried off his face himself, thanked Monroe, and tossed him a nickel. Then Clint Warren, the man who ran the town of Violence, walked outside. He felt pretty damned good, and very confident.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Tim Colter remained in fine spirits. Until the train arrived one morning, for on it was a passenger, a man with the last name Rose.

  Stewart Rose’s brother. And he wore a brace of Navy Colts.

  CHAPTER 29

  Rancher Clint Warren, the man who ran the town of Violence, met Chet Rose in the livery stable that had just opened on Fifth Street. He tossed the brother of Stewart Rose a leather pouch that jingled with coins. Then he handed the gunfighter a cigar.

  “Make it personal,” said the man.

  “He killed my kid brother,” Chet Rose said. “It is personal.” Then Chet Rose stuck the cigar into the top pocket of his vest. “I’ll smoke this after that man-killin’ bastard lies dead on the street.” His other hand held the pouch, which he tossed up and caught, smiling at the sound the coins made. “Sounds just ’bout right.”

  “Enjoy your stay in Violence,” said the man who ran the town. “Then get out. You don’t know me. So don’t come asking for more money when Colter’s dead.” He spun on his heel, and walked out, through the door that led to the corral and not Union Street, so as not to be seen by passersby. The man who ran the town of Violence, after all, was a careful man.

  Chet Rose watched him leave. He thought about killing the man who had sent for him. After all, the man had just paid him a good sum of money—more than his stupid brother was worth—and he doubted if the man had enough money on his person to make murder worthwhile. He slipped the coin bag into the pocket of his linen duster, and walked out of the livery. Only he took the front entrance. The coins still jingled. The wind blew. The locomotive that had brought him all the way from Omaha, Nebraska, chugged and coughed and groaned. Smoke shot out of the stack in short heaves. Few people moved about the street at this time of day, just past dawn. Still asleep, Chet Rose thought. That was a good thing. For Chet, loaded up on coffee served on the train, was wide awake. He had never been able to sleep on trains anyway. Mostly, because he had been robbing them.

  He wore tan trousers, brown boots, and one gaudy pullover, collarless shirt with prints of small flowers, yellow and pink roses, green leaves against a navy blue background. His bandanna was crimson. His hat black. He pushed back the duster, revealing the Navy Colt on his right hip, and walked across the dirt until he stepped onto the boardwalk in front of a vacant building.

  Chet Rose decided that the best spot, for the best show, would be between two places he figured quite popular in a town like this one. Walking down the south side of the street, he came to a place called The Blarney Stone. Across from it was Slade’s Saloon. Not that anyone was drinking, gambling, or whoring at this hour in the morning, but it would have to do. Someone whistled behind him, and Chet Rose stepped aside, until the whistling man walked past him.

  “Hey, boy,” Chet Rose called out to the Negro.

  The black man stopped “Camptown Races” and turned. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “You know where the marshal’s office is, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.” The black man pointed across and down the street. “It’s right—”

  “I don’t care where it’s at, boy. I asked you if you knowed where it was. Now I’m gonna tell you what you’re gonna do for me.”

  The man swallowed down his fear. That made Chet Rose smile.

  “You go fetch the marshal. Tell him that Chet Rose is waitin’ for him right here on Union Street. Tell him Chet Rose is Stewart Rose’s brother. You got that, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Repeat it.”

  The black man did, almost verbatim. Chet Rose smiled, and told the Negro to run along. He leaned against a wooden column, and tugged on the gun in his holster. He had slicked down the insides of the holster with grease from a hog, and the Navy Colt came out smoothly. He checked the percussion caps as he spun the cylinder on his hand, and watched as the black man crossed the street, and began knocking on the door of a frame building. The door opened. The black man disappeared inside. The door closed.

  Chet Rose grinned. He slipped the .36-caliber revolver back into the holster, then looked across at the other column. He counted seven bullet holes that had splintered the wood, which told him that he had made a wise choice when he picked this spot for a showdown with Marshal Tim Colter. This would work out just fine, just fine, he told himself. Plenty of shootings had happened in this little burg’s brief history. Men had been shot and killed right here. But on this morning, on this day, Chet Rose would give the townspeople something that they would be talking about for years to come. Their grandkids would be telling their own young’uns about the fine summer morning when Chet Rose gunned down Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Colter on the streets of Violence, Idaho Territory.

  * * *

  After a big yawn, Tim Colter poured black coffee into a tin cup on his desk. The coffee was cold, and from the previous day, and did little to wake him up. Jed Reno busied himself trying to get a fire lighted in the potbelly stove. Eugene Harker stood by the window, staring down the street. From inside the jail room, still unfinished, Mix Range snored.

  “What did this gent say his name was?” Colter didn’t think he had heard correctly.

  “Chet Rose, Marshal, sir.” The black man stepped away from the window. “He’s still just standing there, sir, in front of The Blarney Stone, leaning against one of them wooden posts.”

  “Rose.” Colter stepped back and opened one of the drawers of his desk. Since setting up shop h
ere, the U.P. had been quite thorough in delivering the latest wanted dodgers. It took Colter less than a minute to pull one out. He held up the poster for Eugene Harker to study. “This the gent?”

  “I reckon. Same beady eyes and a nose that got busted a few times.”

  Colter laid the poster on the desk. Reno rose, looked at the paper, and then his one eye locked on Tim Colter.

  “Brother of the gent you killed in Oregon?”

  Colter nodded.

  Reno tapped the poster. “Their mama and daddy must be real proud of ’em two sons they raised.” Reno read. “Train robbery. Bank robbery. Murder.” Reno closed the grate to the stove, now that a fire was going, and moved to the window. Next he glanced at the Hawken rifle in the gun case.

  “I can kill him real easy, boy. From right here. He’d never knowed what killed him till his brother told him in Hell.”

  After finishing the cold coffee, Tim Colter laughed and walked to the case. “Thank you, no, Jed. I’ll do this my way.” He buckled on the gunbelt and checked the loads on the LeMat.

  “Don’t be a fool, boy,” Reno said. “You know better than that. You didn’t give that Warren boy a fair chance when you tussled with him. Ain’t that how I taught you?”

  The LeMat fell into the holster. Tim Colter found his hat and set it on his head. “That was payback. Levi Warren sucker-punched me. This fellow wants revenge. Family honor. That’s a big deal with boys from Texas, I hear.”

  “The Warrens hail from Texas,” Reno said.

  “Don’t worry, Jed.” Colter moved to the door and pulled it open.

  “I’ll be seeing you, Marshal, sir,” Eugene Harker said. Instead of running into Jasper Monroe’s office next door, though, the freedman crossed the street, moving as fast as a pronghorn antelope, went down the alley between two buildings facing the marshal’s office, and disappeared.

  Colter stepped outside. Reno followed him.

  “Stay here, Jed,” Colter said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “I hope so,” Jed Reno called to Colter’s back as the lawman stepped off the boardwalk and moved to the center of the street. Then Tim Colter began walking down Union Street toward the gunman in the linen duster, who kept leaning against a wooden column in front of Paddy O’Rourke’s gambling hall.