The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  She found the letter, opened it with trembling hands, and slid it across the table. Colter picked it up, read it, and frowned.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he asked.

  “I did,” she said. “In two letters I wrote. I wrote you that I was coming. Twice. They asked me to come. They said you wanted me to come. I wrote twice. You never answered. I . . .”

  Colter shook his head dumbly. He looked at Jed Reno. Hell, he even looked at Mix Range, who had lowered his screwdriver, glanced at Betsy, and said, “I wish my schoolmistress looked like you, ma’am. I might have turned out all right.”

  Betsy studied Mix Range. Her lips parted, but she did not speak.

  “I never got any letters, Betsy,” Tim said as if apologizing. “And I sure didn’t want you here.”

  That, he immediately regretted. It wasn’t what he meant to say, but he had said it, and she wasn’t waiting to hear his explanation.

  Mix Range went back to turning screws through wood. Jed Reno studied the pipe he lighted, and stared out the window at the bustling activity on Union Street. Betsy McDonnell gave Tim Colter a lesson in language, in manners, in words Mix Range could not comprehend, but some that would have made even Mix Range blush. She forgot about the rough treatment she had received just a few minutes earlier, forgot that Tim Colter had saved her from even more embarrassment. She did not stop her tirade until she had pretty much finished using words one might not find in a Common School Dictionary. She only paused to catch her breath, but it was Jed Reno who came to Colter’s defense.

  “He don’t mean that, ma’am.” Reno pointed the stem of the pipe out the window. “Just that this ain’t no fit place for a proper lady. The mayor . . . you met him . . . and some other muckety-mucks in this burg sent for their wives last November. Maybe December. They come by January. They was gone by March. Back east. This just ain’t a fit place for a good woman. And you’re a good woman. Finest I’ve ever laid eyes on. And I sure appreciate your coming here to help them Flemish children.”

  Betsy McDonnell blinked, and then bowed slightly at the one-eyed trapper. “Thank you,” she said at last.

  “No, ma’am,” Jed Reno said. “It’s us who should be thanking you.”

  “Thank you,” Mix Range said, as if taking his cue.

  “Betsy.” Now it was Tim Colter who could talk.

  She turned. She even smiled. He smiled back, but only briefly.

  “Not getting a letter or two from you is one thing,” he said. He had been doing a lot of thinking during Betsy’s monologue. “The express riders, the trains, the stages, the distance. You know how slow the mail can be. But . . .” He pointed at the letter she had received. “There is no Violet School Board in this town.... I doubt if there’s a school in this whole territory, and certainly no school board.” He shook his head. “Mrs. Dorothy Greer? There’s no Dorothy Greer that I know of in this town, and she certainly doesn’t represent any school board.”

  “But . . .”

  They fell silent.

  “Someone wanted you to come here,” Colter said.

  “To get to you,” Reno said, nodding at Colter.

  “What do you mean?” Betsy asked.

  Colter had no time to answer. Because as he was preparing his statement, the door swung open, and several women barged in. None was a Mrs. Dorothy Greer, but one was Mrs. Sien Slootmaekers, mother of the late Ferre Slootmaekers. And while they were hugging and kissing Betsy McDonnell, an Irish railroad worker came in, screaming:

  “Marshal . . . some sons-a-bitchin’ cowpokes be robbing the train!”

  CHAPTER 33

  Who, Tim Colter thought as he ran onto Front Street, would rob a train? In 1868? In Idaho Territory?

  Well, he had read about train robbers before. For a few years, reports had landed in the offices of U.S. marshals across the continent about a gang known as the Reno Brothers. Back in the fall of 1866, they had robbed an Ohio and Mississippi Railway train and made off with sixteen thousand dollars. The three robbers had been arrested when a passenger identified them as the bandits, but they all posted bail, and then the witness got himself gunned down. Charges had been dismissed, the Renos and the other gang members were released, but the Pinkertons were after them now. Especially since they had not stopped robbing trains. But the Renos were running around in Indiana and the Midwest—a long way from Violence, Idaho Territory.

  Footsteps sounded behind him, but Colter did not have to look back. He knew that would be Jed Reno, armed with that Colt and his big flintlock. He ran down the boardwalk as people gave him a wide berth, moving toward the black smoke puffing from the stack of a Union Pacific engine. When he reached the depot, the U.P. man, in striped trousers and a shirt with a paper collar, pointed down the railroad with his left hand. His right held a handkerchief tightly against his bald head, which was bleeding a considerable amount.

  “They took off,” he said. Tears of pain filled his eyes. “On a . . . handcar.”

  Holstering his LeMat, Colter stared down the tracks. In the distance, he could see a rail car moving west. Jed Reno stepped past him, and brought the Hawken to his shoulder. After steadying the barrel, the old man drew a breath, held it, but then exhaled and brought the big rifle down, shaking his head.

  “Out of range,” he said. “No need to waste lead.”

  “A handcar?” Colter shook his head, and looked around while the Union Pacific stationmaster said that four men—four cowboys—had walked inside the depot shortly after the train arrived. When two U.P. workers came out with the strongbox to pay the workers, the cowboys pulled their six-shooters.

  “Nobody robs trains,” another U.P. man said.

  Apparently, he had not heard about the hell the Reno boys had been raising over in Indiana.

  “Took our watches, too,” said the U.P. man. “And our wallets.”

  “We’re wastin’ time,” said another voice, and Colter blinked as he turned around to see Mix Range hurrying past him toward the rails. Another handcar was on a sidetrack. “Let’s go get ’em.”

  Colter did not hesitate. Nor did Jed Reno. Both men jumped off the platform. “Get that switch turned,” Colter shouted back at the U.P. men. He climbed on the cart as Mix Range started pushing down on the iron bar. The cart was rolling as Jed Reno tossed his Hawken onto the car and then leaped on, with Colter pulling him up.

  A few U.P. men worked the switch, moving the rails, which set in place just a few seconds before the cart rolled onto the main tracks. They rode west, the sun on their backs, chasing the other U.P. handcar, with four men and a strongbox.

  Colter had done some fast thinking. He had no time to saddle any horses. They might lose the robbers, and—Violence being a railroad town—he had found few horses on the hitching posts at this time of day. The cowboys—those that were not robbing trains—were sleeping off their hangovers back at the cow camp at Clint Warren’s ranch.

  The rails led west. There was no way to go, except to Laramie City and wherever the rails reached by now. If they kept going west—and they certainly would not start back east—they would run into more U.P. workers, who would not treat them kindly when they realized those Texas waddies had stolen money meant for track layers, surveyors, foremen, and everyone else on the railroad’s payroll. Those cowboys could be stupid, but Tim Colter didn’t think so.

  He moved around to the front of the cart and began helping Mix Range work the pump. Instantly they picked up more speed.

  “Why would cowboys rob a train?” Jed Reno asked.

  “Out of money,” Mix Range answered. “That’s why I robbed banks and stores and saloons and . . .” He shut up, and then offered Colter a wan smile.

  “But why take one of these contraptions?” Reno asked. He moved toward the front of the cart, dangled his legs over the side, and kept the Hawken over his thighs, waiting for the thieves to come into range. Wind roared as the cart’s speed increased.

  Colter and Range had already worked up a good sweat. Mak
ing one of these handcars go took a lot more effort than one would think. Colter wished he had thought to bring gloves. The iron bars he pushed down and let up, over and over again, rubbed his hands raw.

  “I’m betting they have horses hobbled somewhere,” Colter said.

  “One more man then,” Reno said. “Holding the horses.”

  “One.” Colter pumped down, then let his arms come up as Mix Range pushed. “Maybe more.”

  Reno looked back at Mix Range. “You got a gun?”

  The Alabama boy’s face went blank. He blinked, bit his lip as he worked the pump, and shook his head. “I’m a prisoner,” he said. “Remember?”

  “Yeah.” Reno drew the Colt, found a capper in a leather pouch, which hung from his shoulder, and fitted a percussion cap onto the sixth nipple on the cylinder of the .44-caliber pistol.

  They went down a short hill, picking up speed, and the momentum carried them back up the next hill and across the flats again. Colter kept at the pump, but his back was to the men they chased, and he didn’t like that at all. When a man wore a tin star, he wanted to see the men he was chasing—especially when those men packed guns.

  “Are we closer?” Colter called out above the roar of the wind in his ears.

  “Yeah,” Reno answered. “Two of them are cranking on the handle. They’s cowboys, all right. I can see their hats and their leggings. Guess that’s the strongbox in front of their cart. Then there’s them two cowboys.”

  “What are they doing?” Colter asked.

  “Aiming their guns at us, boy. What else?”

  The iron handle went down, came up, went down, came up.

  “Still out of range, I think,” Reno said.

  Five pumps on that handle later, and a shot rang out. It whined off the iron handle, inches from Colter’s blistered hands, sending a spark flying as the bullet ricocheted off into the pale blue sky, leaving a white mark on the iron bar.

  Colter let go of the bar and dropped to the floor of the cart. Drawing his revolver, he spun around, but barked an order to Mix Range. “Keep us moving, Mix. Don’t slow down.”

  In the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Jed Reno as the one-eyed trapper brought the Hawken to his shoulder. “Reckon they’re in range after all.”

  Now, only one of the cowboys worked the pump that kept the handcar rolling down the U.P. rails. The one who had been helping had turned and aimed a revolver. He stood facing east. The man working the cart had his back to Colter, Reno, and Range. Another lay on the ground on the south side of the cart. The last man was beside the strongbox, on a knee, at the front of the cart, near the man aiming the revolver, which belched smoke.

  Colter didn’t hear the shot, not with the wind roaring in his ears, and he did not feel any lead sing past him.

  They were too far away for an accurate pistol shot.

  Yet, the man lying on his belly had a rifle, and it rang out. That slug tore through the air, buzzing past Colter’s right ear like a bumblebee. Colter sighed, then lowered the LeMat. A shot from that revolver would be as useless as the one the cowboy had fired at them.

  The rifle from the man on his belly spat out another shot, which dug into the dirt on the south side of the tracks about ten yards in front of the cart. A second later, the rifle fired again. This one thudded into the floor of the cart, leaving a trail of splinters inches from the rear of the machine.

  “Boy got himself a repeating rifle,” Reno said. The old man pulled back the hammer on the Hawken.

  “Can you get him—” Colter couldn’t finish. Another shot from the handcar in front of them sent a slug that whined off the front wheel. “From here?” Colter finished.

  “Risky,” Reno said. “Him on the floor like that and all. But that don’t make . . .” Another shot from the man with the repeating rifle went wide and high. “. . . make no never mind to me.”

  Reno fired the big Hawken, and the smoke was past the cart so quickly, Colter did not even catch the scent of gunpowder. He heard, instead, the report of the rifle from the cart ahead of them. That told Colter that Reno had missed his shot, but then he saw something that changed his mind.

  The cowboy pumping the cart bent low with the handle, and when the pump came up, the cowboy went flying backward, off the cart, landing on the tracks, and, thankfully, rolling off to the side....

  As he pulled out his bullet pouch and powder horn, Reno had swung his legs back onto the cart’s floor. The old man grinned at Colter as he began to reload the Hawken, even as another bullet tore through the air.

  “That old cuss was a bigger target,” Reno said.

  The cart flew past the body on the side of the tracks. One quick glance—which was all Colter could see with the handcar speeding west—told him that the man was dead. Maybe two hundred yards separated the two carts now. The repeating rifle barked twice, but then the cowboy had to sit up to reload. Their cart was slowing down, so the one with the Colt went back to pumping the handle.

  Colter, along with Reno and Range, had one advantage. They were looking at where they were going, but the train robbers kept their eyes east, at Colter, Range, and Reno.

  “What the hell?” As he brought the handle up, Range jutted his chin off toward the west. “What’s that there?”

  Colter saw the men on the side of the tracks. Indians? No, these were white men. At first, he thought they might be the robbers’ accomplices, the ones left here with the horses the men would use to make their getaway. But . . . no . . . those men did not wear cowboy hats. And, from what Colter could see, they didn’t carry guns. One was running forward along the south side of the tracks, waving a red bandanna over his head. Colter couldn’t hear him because of the roar of wind.

  And the gunshot. The cowboy with the repeating rifle had finished reloading, and the Henry rifle—Colter assumed it was a Henry—rang out twice more. One of those shots ricocheted off the handle in front of Mix Range.

  Range sang out with a curse. “That would’ve blowed my head off if I hadn’t been a-pumpin’,” he said.

  The man started to fire again, but stopped, as the car sped past the man waving the red bandanna. Other men stood alongside the tracks, waving arms, shouting.

  Colter took a chance. He stood, careful to avoid the iron bar that kept moving up and down. Reno had finished reloading the Hawken, and so he brought the stock to his shoulder. The other cowhand, the one closest to the strongbox who was not working the handle, fired his revolver.

  Now their cart passed the man waving the red bandanna. Reno was closest, but he was aiming at the man with the .44-caliber Henry. Colter wet his lips. Leaned over. He tried to hear what the man was yelling as the car raced past him.

  “Fools . . .” That was about all Colter could catch. No. It had been “damned fools.” And then he looked back at the man, who had turned, and kept pointing. Pointing west.

  Tim Colter understood one more word.

  “Bridge.”

  A bullet tore a hole through the brim of his hat, but the hat—a good-fitting hat—remained firm on Colter’s head. He turned, focused again on the men they chased. They were close now. Twenty yards. The Colt barked again. Colter shifted the pivot on the LeMat, and braced himself as he aimed. They raced past the other Union Pacific workers on both sides of the tracks, and heard their screams and curses.

  The Hawken roared.

  The man with the Henry rifle screamed and rolled off the side of the cart, the rifle bounding down the embankment. Colter started to pull the trigger on the LeMat. That’s when he saw. That’s when he realized. That’s when he turned to Jed Reno and shouted.

  “JUMP!”

  CHAPTER 34

  The two cowboys left on the cart managed to turn just before they reached the bridge.

  Well, where there would have been a bridge.

  They must have screamed. One seemed to try to leap off the cart, while the other just stared in horror at the fate that awaited him. The car left the rails, and for a moment—an incredibly brief mo
ment—the car seemed to be flying like a raven. Then it crashed like a boulder, disappearing as the second cart—the one abandoned by Colter, Reno, and Range—followed, leaving the rails, moving down through the air, out of sight, crashing on the rocks below.

  Colter managed to lower the hammer on the LeMat before he jumped off the cart. He landed on the sagebrush and sod with a prayer that the powerful revolver would not go off anyway, and blow his head off, or injure or kill one of the railroad workers or Mix Range. Or Jed Reno. The prayer was answered, but he did drop the heavy pistol as he bounced across the plains.

  He felt as if he kept rolling, then . . . What was that saying? “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Eventually, as he rolled and bounced and got jarred this way and the other, Colter seemed to understand that he was rolling downhill. Down the incline. That’s why there was a bridge here . . . or was supposed to be a bridge.

  Tasting blood on his tongue, and feeling the rough ground and brush rip through his shirt and pants and skin, he felt himself slowing, then came to a stop. His hat was gone. Even a good-fitting hat could not have withstood that little tumble. His head ached. He turned his head and spit out blood. That was a good sign. Not the blood, though it wasn’t much. But the fact that he could turn his head. His neck wasn’t broken. Nor was his back. His ears rang, but he had pushed himself up to a seated position when the first railroad man reached him.

  The man let loose with a stream of profanity in Gaelic—or what Colter assumed was Gaelic—but he recognized the marshal of Violence, and stopped his profane tirade, and settled on one knee.

  “Are ye all right, Marshal?”

  Colter nodded, spit out another bit of blood, but ran his tongue around his mouth. He seemed to have all of his tongue. So he had not bit off part, or all, of it. His arms moved. He could wiggle his boots. He stood and looked up the hill he had rolled down. His first thought was to start climbing. The Irish railroader had risen and offered a firm hand to help him up the rise.