Colter stopped, glanced again at Reno and the saloon, and afterward turned toward Brod, who was speaking.
“You ain’t that big . . . but you sure is quick.”
“Why don’t we quit this foolishness,” Colter suggested. His jaw tilted toward the still unconscious Paddy O’Rourke. “You tell me what this was all about.”
Brod’s hands were clenched again. His face remained bloody, but he kept right on smiling.
“Just havin’ some fun.”
And he came again, swinging those powerful arms like the blades on a windmill.
Colter backed away, into the middle of the street, giving him more room. He was smaller than Brod, and that gave him an advantage, especially out here in the open. But those fists kept coming; Brod Warren kept laughing, while blood spilled off his chin; and the arms, those muscular, intimidating arms, kept swinging.
One of them clipped Colter’s left ear, just a glancing blow, but it sent the deputy marshal spinning into the wooden column across the street at Slade’s Saloon. If Brod had caught him full, Colter figured, his head would now be rolling down Union Street. He had no time to shake his head, or even clear his thoughts, because Colter knew the big man was coming to finish him.
“C’mon, you big waddy. Stomp that lawdog all the way to China.”
The words came from Micah Slade. A crowd had gathered in front of Slade’s Saloon, too. And, now that Colter had a fairly clear view of Union Street, they were outside of practically every store, gin joint—even the hotel—at any place open for business.
Brod Warren let loose with a powerful punch.
Colter ducked, dived left, his right hand splashing in the water trough. Wood cracked. Brod Warren screamed. Colter came up to his knees, splashed the water on his face, and sprang to his feet.
To Colter’s astonishment, Brod Warren was backing away from him, away from Slade’s Saloon, and away from the column he had just cracked. Yes, the cowboy’s punch had knocked the wooden stud off-kilter, separating the top from the awning. The big man’s right hand already began swelling, and those giant knuckles, which had looked like hills, were beginning to resemble mountains. Practically every bone in his hand had been busted by that brutal punch.
It did not stop Brod Warren, however. It merely made him mad.
He let out a primeval roar, those eyes filling with hatred, and the cowhand charged to the hoots and hollers of those gathered in front of Slade’s Saloon and The Blarney Stone. Brod Warren no longer smiled. Hate filled his face.
Colter brought up his right arm to deflect the big man’s punch. And Brod, so angered, had punched with his right hand. The busted bones slammed into Colter’s forearm, hurting Colter like blazes, but sending spasms of pain shooting through Brod’s hand down his arm, into his shoulders, and down his spine. The big man backed up, tears filling his eyes, and he lowered his right hand, now useless.
Of course, Brod Warren still had a rock-hard left hand, which was about the size of a mountain and hit like a freight train. Colter decided he should take care of business now, before the shock wore off and the big bully remembered he had another fist, which was not broken and swollen.
So Tim Colter stepped in, letting loose with a left uppercut that caught the cowboy’s jaw. The head snapped back, and the battered cowboy hat fell off. Colter drove a fist into the stomach; and as Brod doubled over, Colter caught the man with another driving punch, which came up to slam into the already-busted, bleeding nose. Colter didn’t stop. Indeed, he knew he could not stop. The next jab glanced off Brod’s shoulder, but Colter recovered and sent two more to the man’s face. Colter blinked. He could see the fog and the haze beginning to cloud Brod’s eyes. The cowhand was finished. Should be finished. Yet, Tim Colter knew he could not quit. Those Warren boys were tough as cobs, and if Brod snapped out of that daze, he might break Tim Colter into ten thousand little pieces.
Another jab into the stomach. Two more. The man doubled over, and Colter had to finish it. Now. Both hands shot up, grabbed fistfuls of Brod’s hair, and he brought the head down while bringing his knee up. But this was Violence. Where anything was fair in any kind of fight.
He felt the jaw break, and heard a muffled whine. Colter stepped back, to let Brod drop to his knees. The man was still up—if only on his knees—and started shaking his head, and his busted hand, trying to shake some sense into his being.
Tim Colter swore.
So did several others watching.
One prostitute let out a whistle.
Colter stepped up, then swung a haymaker into the man’s temple. That almost broke Tim Colter’s hand.
As he stepped back, trying to shake some feeling into his fingers and swollen, scarred knuckles, Tim Colter blinked. The big cowhand was trying to keep from falling face-first into the dust, but his arms trembled, and he moaned as he fell like some giant redwood tree crashing to the earth.
Colter weaved his way back to the water trough in front of Slade’s Saloon, sucking on his bleeding knuckles before cupping his hands and filling them with water. The water revived him. When he turned back, he saw the two other Warren boys standing over their unconscious brother. Jed Reno was at their side, still holding the Colt loosely in one hand, while butting the stock of the Hawken on the dirt. The old man grinned widely.
When he made his way back to the center of the street, Tyrone Warren, still looking like he should be dealing faro, looked up. “You’ve whipped both of my brothers, Marshal.” He said it as though he were impressed.
“He gonna get one of ’em iron boots?” Levi Warren asked.
Colter shook his head. He looked over at Paddy O’Rourke, who was just now coming around. “Get him home, boys.” He grinned, which hurt. “I don’t think I’ve got a shackle big enough for him. But . . .” Colter tilted his hat at the Irishman, who was being helped to his feet by a couple of his tinhorn gamblers and gunmen. “. . . O’Rourke might hit you up for damages.”
“Pa’ll take it out of Brod’s pay,” Tyrone said. “Here he comes now.”
Colter turned, instinctively putting his hand on the butt of the LeMat. The rancher puffed on a cigar, glanced at O’Rourke, at the busted window, and at his big son, still facedown in the dirt.
“You done that, Marshal,” the old rancher said as he withdrew the cigar from his mouth, “all by your lonesome?”
“Tell your cowboys that,” Colter answered. He was in no mood for jokes. “When they come to Violence.”
Warren’s eyes hardened into iron. “I’ll remember that. And I’ll give ’em fair warnin’.” He looked down at the crumpled mass of Brod Warren, and then the face rose to meet the stares of his two other sons. “Get your brother back home, you dumb oafs.” He spun around, fished out a coin purse, and tossed some twenty-dollar pieces at Paddy O’Rourke’s feet.
* * *
“Let’s go,” Colter said, nodding at Jed Reno.
The mountain man put away the Colt, hoisted the heavy Hawken to his shoulder, and nodded. They crossed Union Street, picked up the boardwalk past Slade’s Saloon, and moved east. At the edge of town, they found Eugene Harker’s home. You might have called it better than a sod hut, or a tent, and for a former slave, Eugene Harker might have considered it a mansion. He had taken parts of a weathered, abandoned, half-burned boxcar and pieced together a home. Many places in town had dirt floors, but Harker’s floor was wood—the wooden floor of the old railroad car. He had wooden walls, too, and a pretty decent roof. A stove to keep him warm in the cruelest of winters. A canvas covering for a door, which he could pull up or off to the side to allow light or a breeze in the summer. The canvas was closed.
Tim Colter knocked on the U.P. wood near the canvas. He called out Harker’s name.
No answer came.
“It’s Tim Colter, Mr. Harker,” Colter said. “And Jed Reno.”
Which was met with silence.
“Might have gone to work,” Reno said.
“Yeah,” Colter agreed. He had not seen the freed
man in the crowd during or after the big set-to with Brod Warren, but Tim Colter’s vision had been clouded by a few blows delivered by that big brute. He hadn’t seen a lot of people, he figured.
“Talk to him at work, you could,” Reno said. “Or bring him to the office.”
“I’d rather do it here,” Colter said. “Away from eyes.”
“And ears.” Reno nodded.
Colter shrugged. If Harker wasn’t home, there was no point in . . . He dropped to a knee, and stuck a finger at the floorboard near the canvas. Reno came quickly, flattening his lips when Colter raised his pointer finger.
Blood.
Both men drew their revolvers, with Reno pushing the barrel of the Colt between canvas and the frame. Slowly he used the case-hardened barrel to push the canvas open. It was pitch dark inside. No candle. No lantern. Just a few threads of sunlight shining through the opening. The fur trapper looked at Colter, who nodded.
Both men stepped inside, covering the darkness with their guns. Satisfied that no one, no threat, faced them, Colter pulled back the canvas covering all the way, letting more light inside. They didn’t have to look far. Just a few feet from the door, Eugene Harker lay in a crumpled heap, blood running from underneath his body to the opening.
A lot of blood, though most of it had begun to dry.
With a savage curse, Tim Colter holstered the LeMat and hurried to the freedman. Reno knelt beside him, and both men gently rolled the man over. Their heads came back, and they wet their lips.
“By Jupiter . . .” Reno shook his head. “Who’d do that to a man?”
Colter put his finger on the black man’s cold throat, frowned, and next lifted the left wrist. Nothing. With a heavy sigh, he shook his head.
They stared into the face of Eugene Harker. Or what had been his face. One eye stared blankly, never to see again. The other had been knocked out of its socket. His nose and lips were mashed into bloody pulp. His teeth broken into shards, but not before he had bit off part of his tongue.
“I’ve seen some beatings in my day,” Reno said, pushing himself up, then stepping out of the foul-smelling home of Eugene Harker, to breathe fresh air, to get the sour taste out of his mouth, to get far away from what once had been a good man. “Indians would mutilate a white man, or another Indian, but that was their way. So the enemy wouldn’t come after them in the Happy Hunting Ground. But those were Indians. No Indian done this.”
“No man did this, either,” Colter said. “It was a monster. A damned monster.”
Colter rose. “I’ll let our fair mayor know that he has more business. But that he’ll have to do the burying and the singing himself.”
“You best let me do that, boy,” Reno said, and the firmness of that one-eyed stare told Colter that the mountain man would brook no argument. “You’re a mite riled, and one funeral’s enough for one day.” He looked back toward the ramshackle home. “He wasn’t a bad man, I reckon. Just got mixed up with some wrong boys.”
“Like Monroe.”
“The tracks match. The one Harker left by our office. The one I found leading away from my old post. But that don’t actually mean that it was Harker that set fire to my place.”
Colter remained firm. “Yes,” he said, “it does.”
“Maybe. But it don’t mean Monroe sent him to burn my place down.”
“Yes,” Colter said, and he began walking away. “It does. I just can’t prove it—especially now that Harker can’t talk.”
CHAPTER 32
After a while, Tim Colter did let it go. That was one thing he had learned about being a lawman. If you followed the law—really followed it, and not went off on your own trail for justice, as some men with badges tended to do—then you had to come to terms that, well, sometimes, justice did not prevail. Crimes went unpunished. Guilty men went free. Dead men, and women, and children—as he remembered Ferre Slootmaekers and his poor mother, Sien—were, sometimes, not avenged.
Besides, two days later, the cowboys from Texas arrived. Clint Warren, however, came first. And he came with a cigar.
“For you, Marshal,” he said with a little smile.
Colter took the cigar, studying it, rolling it in his fingers. It was a fine cigar. Havana. Smelled great. Colter laid it on his desk and looked up at the old rancher, waiting.
“I figure any man who whips two of my sons deserves a cigar.” He nodded and his smile widened. “Most folks will tell you that takes some doin’.”
Colter showed the rancher a few knuckles that had yet to heal, and some bruises on his face, and that ear that seemed as though it would never return to its normal shape.
That made the rancher laugh.
“You might want to enjoy that cigar now, though, Mr. Colter,” Clint Warren said. “Because I got cattle in the valley and a lot of Texas cowpunchers who want to see the elephant and tree this town.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Colter said.
“Just bein’ a good citizen.” And Clint Warren was gone, spurs jingling to his musical laughter as he walked down the boardwalk toward Slade’s Saloon.
Well, Warren had warned Tim Colter, and the old rancher must have warned his hired hands. Because to the surprise of Tim Colter, Jed Reno, Mayor Jasper Monroe, and practically every business owner in Violence, those Texas waddies seemed to be on their best behavior. Oh, they got a little wild every now and then, shot up one of the new stores, and ripped down some buildings that were being put up. And there were quite a few fistfights among the railroad crews. Yet, most of them were easy to corral after too much whiskey, cards, and women at Slade’s, O’Rourke’s, Jake’s, and the other rough-and-tumble businesses that continued to grow along Union Street.
Until, that is, the stagecoach from Salt Lake City arrived four days later.
Jed Reno and Tim Colter were in the corral, releasing the Oregon Boots on a couple of waddies, two railroaders, and one gambler, who had shot a man dead at Jake’s Place and refused to pay for the dead man’s burial. Self-defense, of course. Everybody who ever killed a man in Violence had pleaded self-defense, and since there was still no judge in this town—except when Tim Colter passed a sentence, which he knew would never be upheld by a higher court, or even the U.S. marshal in Boise City—usually, a fine was all the killer had to pay.
That didn’t settle well in Tim Colter’s stomach, but he was savvy enough—and so was Jed Reno—not to buck the tiger too much in a place like Violence.
They heard the catcalls and whistles as they left the corral, carrying the heavy sack of shackles that would soon be put on other drunks and hard cases.
“Must be a new soiled dove,” Reno said. The old mountain man yawned and nodded at a woman who was standing atop a hitching rail, waving an umbrella at two cowboys and three railroaders who had, well, sort of treed the newcomer.
Colter sighed. “Wrong side of the street for a hurdy-gurdy girl,” he said.
Because the woman stood in front of Jasper Monroe’s office, which was on the same side of Union Street as Slade’s Saloon and the other watering holes. The gambling dens and the brothels and cribs were on the south side of Union Street. That was how Violence separated decency, with decency being loosely defined.
They walked. They stared.
The woman did a pretty good job of keeping the hands of her admirers at bay. She even pelted one railroader so hard with the umbrella, he staggered back and yelped like a schoolboy, holding his head and cursing at the men laughing at him.
“Good balance,” Reno said.
Colter stared at him.
“Keeping her feet and all,” Reno explained. “Most folks would’ve fallen off that rail, swinging that . . . Colter, what did you call it?”
“Umbrella.”
“Yeah. She’s still up there. Hell, she just belted another one but good. That’s some strumpet.”
Tim Colter stopped. He stared. He dropped the sack of shackles into the street. He cursed.
“That’s no strumpet, Jed,” he said, and sw
ore again.
The gunshot ripped through the morning air, and the railroaders and cowboys and admirers turned at the sound of Colter’s LeMat. The woman lost her footing and fell, but did not tumble because Jasper Monroe and Aloysius Murden caught her and pulled her off the dirt of Union Street and onto the dirt that covered the boardwalk in front of Monroe’s barbershop and undertaking parlor.
“Back off, boys.” There was an edge to Colter’s voice, and the cowboys and railroaders and admirers understood that well enough. They helped the one with the bleeding head to his feet, and they shuffled off across the street toward The Blarney Stone.
Colter came to the boardwalk. He blinked, wet his lips, and holstered the heavy pistol. Slowly he removed his hat. The woman nodded. He returned the greeting.
Behind him came the clanging of the iron boots in the sack Jed Reno had picked up. “Ma’am,” Jed Reno said, for he was the only one who had found his voice, “welcome to Violence.”
The woman’s mouth opened, but she had no voice. Not from the shock she had just been given.
“Miss . . . ,” Jasper Monroe tried.
“Betsy,” Colter said at last, “what in Heaven’s name are you doing here?”
* * *
“Teaching school?” Colter asked in disbelief.
He poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of Betsy McDonnell. They were in his office, her luggage on the floor, Jed Reno filling his pipe bowl with his blend of tobacco, and Mix Range using a screwdriver to secure some shelves on a bookcase he was finishing. Colter blinked.
“I got a letter,” she said, and she pulled out her purse. She was still shaken, and her face had just begun to return to its normal color. Her breaths came out quickly. Her chest still heaved as her heart hammered against the ribs. Salem, Oregon, and the Bullfrog Café were a long, long way from Union Street, Violence, Idaho Territory.
The Edge of Violence Page 20