The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  As Colter walked, he noticed a few curtains moving from other businesses along Union Street, and more than a few doors closing. People either wanted to see what was about to happen, or they wanted not to get killed by a stray bullet. A few courageous souls even stepped out onto the boardwalk, but none of those stood anywhere near The Blarney Stone or Slade’s Saloon. Slowly, with the ease of a man sure of himself, his ability, and his revolver, Chet Rose stepped off the boardwalk and moved to the center of the street.

  When forty feet of Union Street dust separated the two men, Tim Colter stopped walking.

  “Chet Rose,” he called out, “you’re under arrest.”

  The gunman laughed. Something jingled in the duster he wore. “I ain’t wanted for nothin’ in Violence, mister. Or anywhere in Idaho Territory.”

  “Train robbery’s a federal offense.”

  “Yeah. Well. I didn’t come here to get arrested, you yellow-livered lawdog. I come on account of what you done to Stewart. Stewart was a good boy. So this here ain’t legal. Ain’t got nothin’ to do with no laws or such. This here’s personal. Family honor. So I’m callin’ you out.”

  “How did you know I was here?” Colter asked.

  “Word gets around, boy. I got friends.”

  “You don’t have any friends, Stewart. Neither did your brother.”

  The gunfighter’s eyes blazed with anger, and he was cursing savagely as he moved to his left, drawing the Colt from its holster.

  Tim Colter did not move. He had learned that moving made it hard to get a good aim. He had also learned another thing about gunfighting, something that, apparently, Chet Rose had not comprehended.

  The trail-robbing murderer from Texas fired from his hip, and then dropped to a knee. The .36-caliber Colt belched flame and smoke as Chet Rose, his face a mask of anger and hatred, fanned back the hammer of the revolver with his left palm. His right finger stayed on the trigger. The Colt sprayed lead balls down Union Street.

  One bullet clipped a lock of Tim Colter’s hair. Another dug up dirt between the lawman’s legs.

  Colter drew deliberately. Some might even have called his draw slow. Jed Reno thought it to be eternally slow.

  The heavy LeMat came up in Colter’s right hand. Only then did Tim Colter move. He swung his left leg behind his right, bracing his weight, and making himself a smaller target as the right arm extended, the big revolver now an extension of his right hand.

  Chet Rose’s last of six shots punched nothing but air a few yards to Colter’s right.

  Now the man was standing, still cursing, chucking the empty, smoking Navy into the dust, and reaching behind him for his backup pistol, a .30-caliber Sharps derringer. Rose had no chance of making that shot at this range, so Colter didn’t squeeze the trigger.

  From the boardwalk in front of the marshal’s office, Jed Reno screamed, “Shoot that cur, boy! Don’t give him no chance!”

  Tim Colter, however, wanted to take Chet Rose alive. The Sharps spat four times, and then Rose was running toward The Blarney Stone, reaching for yet another pistol. This one was a Harper’s Ferry, looked to be bigger than a .50-caliber weapon. A single-shot pistol, with a percussion cap, with a ten-inch barrel. A gun like that was one Jed Reno could appreciate. Tim Colter appreciated it, too. Because that gun could blow a hole through Tim’s belly that one of the U.P.’s handcars could fit through.

  Besides, this time, Chet Rose stopped running. He stood at the edge of the boardwalk in front of O’Rourke’s building; he was panting. But as he raised his right hand, which held the big pistol, he turned steady.

  “I’m killin’ you, Colter. And you know that this here’s not for Stewart. It’s for me!”

  Reno screamed, again, “Shoot that cur dog, boy!”

  The gunman’s finger began to tighten on the pistol’s trigger. But Tim Colter touched the LeMat’s trigger first.

  The LeMat roared, and one shot drilled Chet Rose in the center of his chest. He fell backward, against one of the wooden columns. That shot should have killed the murdering scoundrel instantly. But Rose remained standing, and kept a good grip on the Harper’s Ferry pistol, although the barrel was pointed skyward. Somehow, Chet Rose managed to stagger a few feet back into the street. Colter waited for the killer to fall.

  Instead, Rose stopped, spit out bloody phlegm. His hat fell off his head, and the wind blew it toward the water trough in front of Slade’s Saloon. Rose lowered the Harper’s Ferry .54, and aimed again at Tim Colter.

  Once more, the LeMat spoke, but this time Tim Colter took no unnecessary chances. He touched the trigger, thumbed back the hammer, shot again. Two more bullets drilled Chet Rose in the chest. The gun in the killer’s right hand roared, but the bullet slammed into the dirt only a few feet in front of Rose’s feet. Colter shot again, and that bullet put Chet Rose on the ground.

  Chet Rose still sat up. Blood spilled from one corner of his lips. He supported himself with his left hand, which was pressed hard into the dirt.

  Colter moved forward, holding the big LeMat, which he had cocked again, just to be safe. When he was just a couple of yards from the gunman, Colter stopped. Now he lowered the revolver’s hammer and let the heavy cannon fall into the holster.

  The dying killer’s mouth opened. He coughed, spit, and shook his head.

  “You . . .” That was all he could manage. Death began to glaze over his eyes.

  “Say hello to your brother for me,” Tim Colter said.

  The gunman’s lips curled into a snarl, and froze, like his eyes, as he fell onto his side, shuddered once, and died.

  Colter looked around, studying the rooftops and the alleys, and any windows from The Blarney Stone and Slade’s Saloon. The last time he had been in a gunfight on Union Street, there had been more than one assassin. He wet his lips. A few people began to emerge from the buildings, but all were smart enough to keep their hands far from their hips, even if their hips supported no pistols.

  Satisfied at last, Tim Colter put his boot under the outlaw’s chest and turned him over. Chet Rose was dead as he was ever going to be, his shirtfront stained crimson, and a hateful expression on his stiffening face.

  When he turned back to walk to his office, Mayor Jasper Monroe had opened the door and stepped onto the boardwalk. The man was shaking in his boots, and he hadn’t even been shot at.

  “More business for you, Mayor,” Colter said as he walked back. “And I don’t mean a haircut and shave.”

  The mayor’s head bobbed, and he timidly walked to the corpse in the street.

  Tim Colter stopped in front of the office. Jed Reno was squatting in the street just past the boardwalk. He was fingering a print in the dirt. Colter stopped, saw the print, and his two eyes locked onto Jed Reno’s one when the mountain man lifted his head.

  CHAPTER 30

  Tim Colter put the key in the lock on the Oregon Boot and carefully removed the shackle from the left ankle of his prisoner. “Now,” he told the railroader, “be a good boy and stay out of Jake’s Place.” The Irishman, who looked like a few hours short of death, nodded with his bloodshot eyes squeezed tight, and then staggered out of the door and onto Union Street.

  The door did not close, for Jed Reno was walking inside.

  These days, of course, warm as July had become, the door stayed open. So did the window, which Mix Range had put in, just to keep a breeze in the marshal’s hot office. Even in July, there was always a breeze blowing. It might be hot, but at least it blew.

  Colter dropped the shackle into the sack on the chair. On the roof, Mix Range was hammering away. Little wonder that the railroader, who had gotten drunk and tried to tear apart Jake’s Place, looked so lousy, and in such a hurry—or as big of a hurry as a man who had consumed enough of Jake’s rotgut to kill most men could muster up at this time of day.

  “He’s back,” Reno said. “At his little shack.”

  Colter filled two mugs with coffee, keeping one for himself and handing the other to the one-eyed mountain ma
n.

  “When he comes to work at Monroe’s,” Colter said, “we’ll invite him in for a little talk.”

  Reno did not drink the coffee. “Ain’t altogether certain he’ll be coming to work.”

  That caused Colter to lower his tin cup, even before he had tasted it. He waited.

  “He was packing a trunk,” Reno said. Now he sipped the coffee.

  As if on cue, the whistle of the train, at what passed for Violence’s depot, shrieked.

  “East or west?” Colter asked.

  “East.”

  Colter nodded. West would mean that Eugene Harker had grown fed up of city life in Violence and was returning to his previous job of laying track for the Union Pacific. East meant he wanted to get out of the territory.

  “All right,” Colter said. “Let’s go pay—”

  He stopped as a big figure filled the open doorway. The big figure belonged to Clint Warren, who was the man who ran the town of Violence—only neither Reno nor Colter knew that.

  “Mornin’, gents.” Warren smiled.

  Both men returned the greeting, and Colter gestured toward the coffeepot.

  “Thank you kindly, but I’ll pass. Drunk about a gallon at the bunkhouse before we rode into town. Got some business to square away, and then we’ll be ridin’ out to meet the herd. Thought I ought to give you fair warnin’.”

  Colter let out a breath. “Well, I appreciate that, Clint. When do you expect them to hit town?”

  “Two days, I’d guess,” he answered. “That give you long enough to settle your affairs?” He grinned to let them know he was joking. “The both of you?” Now he laughed.

  “I suppose so.” Colter drew the LeMat from his holster and checked the caps on the cylinder. To let Clint Warren know that he wasn’t joking.

  “Well,” the big man turned to go, “I’ll be seein’ you around, gents. I’ll do my best, you know, to keep the lid on ’em boys. But like I done told you, after all them weeks in the saddle, eatin’ dust, and starin’ at nothin’ but the hindquarters of a bunch of stinkin’ longhorn cattle . . . well . . .” He left the rest unsaid, and his spurs jingled as he walked down the boardwalk, past the barbershop and undertaking parlor.

  The train whistle blew again. Colter holstered the big LeMat, and picked up his hat off the desk. “Let’s go pay Mr. Harker a visit before he flees the coop,” he said.

  They were walking out the door when a man’s body crashed through the big plate-glass window at The Blarney Stone.

  * * *

  “Gentlemen,” Clint Warren said as he entered the office at the Yost Hotel. “Sorry I’m late.” He wasn’t. “Some things came up that I just had to attend to.” Which was definitely true.

  “O’Rourke ain’t here yet,” Mayor Jasper Monroe said.

  “He won’t be here.” Warren pulled up a chair and found a cigar in his vest pocket.

  A gun fired along Union Street. Bottles broke. Women screamed.

  “What the hell is all that commotion?” Duncan Gates asked.

  “That’s why Mr. O’Rourke won’t be here.” Clint Warren struck a match against his thumbnail and fired up the stogie. He blew a perfect ring toward the office’s tin-punched ceiling. “Let’s get started. I’ll be busy in probably ten or twenty minutes.”

  * * *

  It was Paddy O’Rourke himself who had flown out of his own window, landed on the boardwalk, and rolled into the dust and dung on Union Street. As Tim Colter and Jed Reno hurried across the street, the Irishman pushed himself up, groggily, and made a wild turn to head back into his gambling parlor. Instead, his boot found some horse apples, and down he went again. This time, it took him longer to get up.

  He was bleeding from his face and hands, and his green jacket had been torn by shards of glass. His nose had been busted, too, and a fog coated his eyes. Yet, like most Irishmen, he remained game, and hard to put down. He pushed himself to his feet again, only to be shoved back onto Union Street sod.

  “What’s happening?” Tim Colter asked, removing his hand from the gambler’s shoulder. Jed Reno stood at the entrance, aiming his Hawken through the batwing doors, but looking into the opening of what had been the finest window in all of Violence, and perhaps all of this massive territory.

  O’Rourke shook the cobwebs out of his head. “I do me own fightin’, laddie. And I’ll . . .”

  He tried to stand, and Colter let him, because the lawman had heard the squeaking of the batwing doors and a grunt from Jed Reno.

  Massive Brod Warren stood behind the doors to the gambling joint, a cigarette dangling from his lips, which grinned a wild smile. The tip of the smoke glowed, and the big man—still wearing that same collarless shirt and the frayed tan vest that he had worn the last time Colter had seen him—stepped out of The Blarney Stone, and let the doors slam behind him.

  He removed the cigarette and exhaled smoke.

  “How ’bout lettin’ me finish this fight, Marshal,” Brod said, and it was not a request or a question, but a demand.

  “Let me at that no-good—”

  Colter turned, saw the derringer in O’Rourke’s hand, and clubbed the gambler with the barrel of the LeMat. The Irishman dropped into the dust without another word, and Colter kicked the derringer into the middle of Union Street.

  Big Brod Warren said, “Marshal, you spoilt my fun.”

  Just then a bottle of beer busted out the pane of another window, and someone inside The Blarney Stone cut loose with a yell. More glass broke. Women screamed. Men hooted, cursed, or fled through the open window or the back doors. No one dared to come through the front entrance—not with Brod Warren standing there.

  “Hell,” Jed Reno said with a sigh.

  “Yeah,” Tim Colter agreed, and watched Brod Warren coming right at him.

  * * *

  “My cattle will be here in two days,” Clint Warren told his silent partners. “Three at the most. But we have a problem. Those sodbusters are still here—and those plows will ruin my pastures.”

  “You have the marshal, too,” Mayor Monroe pointed out.

  Warren lowered the cigar.

  “ ‘You’?” he said. “The correct word is ‘we.’ ” He wasn’t smiling now.

  He pointed at the land speculators. “You platted this town knowing if I could get a ranch started here, we would be set, and Violence—or whatever the hell you want to call it—would wipe out Cheyenne, wipe out Laramie City, and be the king of this territory. And you—and all of you—would make out like bandits, once we bought out those claims from those stupid farmers from where the hell off in Europe.”

  He pointed at Yost. “You made out pretty good, once we got rid of that holier-than-thou partner of yours, didn’t you? Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that what we agreed on?”

  Yost hung his head.

  “And you, Mr. Mayor, you figured this would be your start. From cutting hair to cutting ends to shaving off a few extra dollars. Be governor one day. King of the territory. You put up money with all these other gentlemen. And it was you, if I remember correctly, who brought Paddy O’Rourke into our fold.”

  “Where is O’Rourke?” Murden asked.

  “My boy Brod is kicking him into oblivion. Just to save us some time. Keep the law occupied.”

  “But the law . . . Colter . . . ,” Mayor Monroe started.

  “Don’t worry. I told Brod not to win this fight. Keep it friendly. Right now Colter and the U.P. think that Micah Slade is fighting Paddy O’Rourke for control of this city. And that’s what we want them to think. Keep their eyes on those two buckets of blood. But we’ll have to get rid of Colter. He’s too bullheaded, and too smart for his own good.”

  “He’s also fast,” Gates noted. “Faster than at least your gunman.”

  “Like I said, we try personal first. Rose lost. So what? But I have something else in mind now, and I like it.” He stopped, puffed more on the cigar, and listened to the racket outside. That was shaping up to be one heck of a fight. He wondered ho
w Brod was faring? Maybe he shouldn’t have told his son to hold those punches. Maybe Brod could have done what Stewart Rose’s brother couldn’t do. Kill Tim Colter. Maybe kill Jed Reno, too. But then the federal authorities would be coming down, and coming down like a ton of bricks, on Violence, Idaho Territory, and would leave Clint Warren with a bunch of cattle, an army of Flemish sodbusters, and a son facing a legal hanging for killing a federal deputy.

  Yet, folks in Violence would be talking about this fight for many years to come. And here he was, Clint Warren, the man who ran this town, talking to a bunch of yellow-livered, money-grabbing idiots.

  “I have my own plans for Marshal Colter, boys. Good ones. I’ve got some boys who plan to rob a train, and that’s a federal job. And if that don’t work, well, a while back I sent me off a letter. Out of my public duty. For those sodbusters who want a school for their young’uns. Well, they’re gonna get one. She should arrive sometime soon.”

  “Hey,” Murden asked. “Where’s Eugene Harker?”

  Clint Warren grinned. “Mr. Harker won’t be joinin’ us, gents. Another reason for that little ruckus outside. No, sir, Mr. Harker won’t be joinin’ us ever again.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tim Colter saw Jed Reno shifting the Hawken and drawing the Colt revolver. The old trapper braced the stock of the long gun against his left thigh, while his right hand held the Colt and the thumb eared back the hammer. The rifle pointed at a few faces gathering in front of the busted window. The revolver aimed at Brod Warren’s two brothers as they came through the batwing doors.

  “Easy, boys,” Reno said.

  The two brothers frowned.

  Big Brod, of course, kept right on smiling, and that grin stretched across his face when Tim Colter, sighing heavily, holstered the big LeMat. Brod swung a haymaker, but Colter ducked underneath it and came up with two quick punches in the cowhand’s stomach. Brod grunted, and Colter quickly shot backward, avoiding another wild punch. That one left Clint Warren’s behemoth son off-balance, so Colter fired three quick jabs into Brod’s face. Blood spurted. Nose cartilage gave way, and Brod backed away, raising his arms to protect his face while shaking his head and wailing out a stream of profanity.