The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  He walked past the snoring of the prisoners, and kept walking, until he reached the outskirts of Reno’s place.

  He caught a hoop a Flemish girl had been rolling. Smiling, he pushed it back to her. She blinked, curtseyed, and hurried away with the hoop toward some other children.

  The song that came from the canvas tent was a familiar tune, but Colter did not understand the words. He moved, as if in a dream, toward the tent, seeing the men and women gathered. Then he saw another tent, filled with children in their clothes of earthen colors. He smelled food, good food, and apple dumplings. It reminded him again that he had not eaten.

  His head shook. Finally he saw Jed Reno, standing at the entrance of what once had been the dugout of his post. He was talking to three men in brown clothes, with dark beards and black hats.

  Before he could start toward Reno to ask him what in blazes was going on here, a voice called his name.

  He turned around, saw her, and swept Betsy McDonnell into his arms.

  CHAPTER 36

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told him.

  He shook his head. “You get a letter from a woman no one has ever heard of. From a school board, when there is no school board in this town, maybe not even in this entire territory. And—”

  She stepped closer to him, put two fingers on his lips, and then she tilted her head to the children, Flemish children playing and laughing.

  “That’s what matters,” she whispered. “And that we’re together.”

  “I am glad to see you,” he said when she lowered her hand. “But something is wrong here. . . .”

  “Ja.” Both Tim Colter and Betsy McDonnell turned to see a big, black-bearded man who towered over them. He would even have towered over Jed Reno, if Reno wasn’t so busy sitting on an overturned bucket, telling a bunch of farm kids and a couple of their fathers, and even one mother, a bunch of lies . . . well, exaggerations . . . about his days trapping beaver and fighting Indians. “Something is wrong.”

  * * *

  How word spread to the farming community that a schoolteacher had arrived was easy enough. Betsy McDonnell had stepped off the stage, been hoo-rawed by some local drunks, and word reached someone that the new lady was here to teach school. Which meant the prayers of the Flemish farmers had been answered. Someone told someone, and that someone told someone else, and one farmer ran to the next homestead, and the cycle kept repeating itself until everyone loaded up, left their plows in the fields, and they arrived in Violence.

  Jed Reno then told someone that, well, since his trading post wasn’t being used for anything but homes for rats, snakes, and coyotes, if the farmers wanted, they could make that the schoolhouse.

  * * *

  “You, too, Jed?” Colter asked when they were alone later that night.

  “Town could use some educating,” the one-eyed trapper said.

  “What it could use,” Colter said, “is a torch.”

  Reno shrugged.

  “Betsy told you that some of the letters she got had been opened before they reached her,” Colter said.

  Reno’s head bobbed.

  Mix Range, who had been awakened upon the return, and was stoking the fire in the stove, closed the grate and shook his head. “Ain’t that wrong?”

  “Wrong.” Colter agreed. “Illegal. Unethical.”

  “And not right.” Range rose to slide the pot of coffee onto the burner.

  “Well.” Reno filled his pipe. “It could be like this. Some fella is taking the mail along his way, and, well, he’s an educated gent, but there ain’t nothing much to read in this place. Why, I once bunked with a trapper who would read anything. Newspapers that he found that was so wrinkled and dried and faded that it would practically blind a fellow. He even took to going into caves and trying to read them pictures some Indians had drawed on the walls and ceilings, who knows how long ago. Some folks like to read. So he picks a letter, opens it, figures it won’t hurt nobody. I wouldn’t put it past anyone out here in this wide spot of lonesome.”

  Colter sighed. “And then someone writes a letter to get Betsy out here.”

  “All right.” Reno lighted his pipe. “So we need to keep a watchful eye on her.”

  “First thing in the morning,” Colter said, “is that we need to talk to the postmaster here.”

  “He ain’t no real postmaster,” Reno said. “I was talking to Gates one time, and he was explaining things to me. Duncan just handles the mail that comes this way.”

  “And opens it,” Colter said.

  Reno drew in a mouthful of smoke. “Let’s find out. Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  And maybe they would have. If Duncan Gates wasn’t dead in the alley that connected First and Third Streets.

  Hal Murdock, the Civil War veteran from Wisconsin who had lost his right leg, right arm, and right eye at Gettysburg, had found him that morning, on his way to Paddy O’Rourke’s gambling hall to empty the spittoons, clean up any blood, and sweep out the joint before the patrons started coming in that afternoon.

  “Stiff as he is,” Reno said after turning the body over with his right foot, “I’ d say he got it sometime last night.” He looked up and down the alley. “On his way home. Shortcut, I expect.”

  “Or meeting someone,” Colter said.

  Reno looked at the body. “Same person who met Eugene Harker would be my guess.”

  “This close to Slade’s and O’Rourke’s,” Colter said, “nobody would have heard the beating he was being given.”

  “Not likely. Reckon there’s no point in me trying to follow a trail.”

  Colter said, “Give it a try. It’s a forlorn hope, but you never know. Maybe the man didn’t walk on any boardwalks. Let me know if you find anything. I’ll go tell Jasper Monroe he has another customer.”

  * * *

  There was another person Tim Colter needed to see that day. After telling Monroe he had some undertaking business waiting for him in that alley, Colter was walking toward the livery stable—where the horses were kept, not prisoners—when he saw Clint Warren riding into town down Union Street. His three sons flanked him. So did six other riders.

  Colter stepped onto the street and waited for them. That brought a smile to the old rancher’s face. He kicked his horse into a trot. His sons and hired men did the same. They rode, smiling, right arms hanging near their holstered revolvers or the stocks of their rifles in the scabbards. A few passersby on the boardwalks that morning gasped, wondering if the rancher would trample the lawman.

  Colter did not waver. He did not blink. But he did put his right palm on the butt of the big LeMat.

  And that stopped Clint Warren and his sons and men . . . a few feet in front of the federal deputy.

  “Mornin’, Marshal.” Warren leaned back in the saddle, which creaked underneath his weight. The big man moved one leg, hooking it over the horn of his saddle.

  “Say hello to the law, boys.”

  The men obeyed, except Big Brod, who could not speak with his jaw busted and wrapped shut with crude bandages.

  “I was about to ride out to pay you a visit, Clint,” Colter said.

  “Takin’ me up on that offer of a thick, burned steak.” The man grinned.

  “I’ve got a complaint about you,” Colter said.

  No one was smiling at that.

  “Who’s complainin’?” Clint Warren asked after a long pause. He moved his foot back into the stirrup, and leaned low in the saddle, over the brown horse’s neck.

  “Three of those farmers say you have cattle on their claims.”

  “Farmers.” Warren leaned back sharply, and his face reddened. “You takin’ sides with a bunch of ignorant sodbusters who don’t know even how to speak good English.”

  Tim Colter never took his eyes off the big rancher, nor did he move his hand from the LeMat, but he noticed everything—enough to say, in a dry whisper, “Warren, if that cowpoke on the blue roan slides that Winchester one more inch out of the scabbard, I’ll start s
hooting. And won’t stop till I’m dead. Which means you’ll be dead long before I am.”

  The rancher wheeled and found the culprit, a young, long-haired boy with a pockmarked face and fuzz for a mustache and goatee. “Witte, you damned fool. Keep your hands on your reins, boy, or I’ll shoot you my ownself.”

  When the cowhand complied with his boss’s request, Colter kept talking. “The only side I’m taking, Warren, is the side of the law. Those farmers have filed legal claims for one hundred and sixty acres. Just as you’ve done. They want to try to turn this country into farmland, that’s their choice. Who knows? Maybe they’ll make it.”

  “Like hell. You ain’t that dumb, lawman. You know no farmer can grow crops here. This is land for cattle. It’s land for me.”

  “You’ve got your land. For all I care, you can put your cattle on land that isn’t claimed by anyone—for now. But you need to get your cattle off those farmers’ land.”

  The big man grinned an evil grin. “We gonna quarrel, Marshal?”

  Colter changed the subject. “I had a bit of a quarrel with six of your boys yesterday. They robbed the U.P. payroll here.”

  With a curt nod, the rancher changed his look. “Not my boys, Marshal. That’s why I rode into town today. To talk to you ’bout what happened. Heard all about it.”

  While listening to Clint Warren’s explanation, Colter had to wonder why the rancher came to town with more than a handful of his men, all carrying firearms, just to tell the law that he had fired those boys, turned them loose, told them to get back south to Texas, that they’d worn out their welcome in Idaho Territory.

  “I told you,” Warren said, “that I don’t control all them boys. Paid them to make the drive, tend to my beef. They spent or lost all their money, decided to get some free for the takin’.” He smiled again, and few men Tim Colter had ever met could make a smile look so damned ugly.

  “I hear you killed all six of those . . . um . . . train robbers.”

  “Is that what you hear?” Colter asked. He didn’t bother to correct the rancher, that Jed Reno had killed two, two others had fallen to their deaths after a trestle had been destroyed, and Cheyenne Indians had caught up with the remaining two.

  “Also heard that you got a new schoolteacher in town.” That ugly smile got uglier.

  “Did Mrs. Dorothy Greer tell you that?”

  The grin remained. “Don’t reckon I know her.”

  Warren’s son, the one who dressed like a cardsharp, leaned back in his saddle, and said, “Maybe she’s one of them new hurdy-gurdy girls.”

  “Who?” Clint Warren laughed. “That Mrs. Greer, or the new schoolmarm?”

  “We’re done talking, boys.” Colter stepped back, spread his legs apart, and moved the hand away from the LeMat. Colter’s eyes told the cowhands that if they wanted to make their play, now was the time to make it . . . and die. “Get your cattle off the farmers’ land. Or there will be beef for breakfast in Violence for quite a while.”

  They rode past Tim Colter at a trot, coming close, but careful enough to keep their horses from hitting, even grazing, the lawman. They turned south along the last street, and pushed their horses into gallops. A few minutes later, there was nothing left of Clint Warren except the dust that lingered in the air, and the bitter taste that remained in Tim Colter’s mouth.

  Not that he had long to think about it, or rinse out his mouth with some of Mix Range’s coffee. Some drunk had taken one of Paddy O’Rourke’s dealers out onto Union Street, and punches were flying; bets were being made on both sides of the street.

  * * *

  Tim Colter knew Clint Warren was no friend. He even knew the rancher was likely the one who had killed the postmaster and Eugene Harker. With his bare hands. Warren had taught two of his sons how to fight with fists, and, from firsthand experience, Colter knew the old man had taught them well. But the boys hadn’t killed those two men. That had been done by someone who enjoyed it, and Clint Warren was the kind of man who would enjoy beating a man to death with bare knuckles.

  A man like Clint Warren would give no more thought over killing an innocent man with a brutal beating than most men would have over . . . well . . . over crushing that locust that Colter had just stepped on.

  “But,” Colter thought aloud, “how can I prove that Warren’s a murderer?”

  Then he stopped, and turned back along the boardwalk, and he looked closer at the insect he had accidentally stepped on.

  “Locust,” he said.

  CHAPTER 37

  The town cemetery, Tim Colter knew, was the most populated acreage in Violence. Colter stood in the wind, hat in his hand, watching the funeral. Well, it wasn’t exactly a funeral, just a burial. And a man like Duncan Gates, one of the town’s founding fathers, didn’t rate an actual mourner. His partner, Aloysius Murden, wasn’t there. Just Tim Colter . . . and the town’s undertaker, Mayor Jasper Monroe.

  “You want some help?” Colter asked.

  Monroe, who had tossed his hat, coat, and vest atop one of the crooked crosses, sank the spade deeper into the earth. His hands held the handle, and his right foot remained on the spade. As he looked up, sweat was plastering his thin hair on his head, and was running down his face. His shirt was already drenched.

  When the mayor didn’t answer, Colter walked over and took the spade. If he didn’t help, then an out-of-shape townsman like Jasper Monroe would be digging this grave for the next two days. Or someone might be digging a grave for the mayor after he croaked from a heart attack.

  Colter moved the dirt over, and let the blade bite into more sod. “I bet now you miss Eugene Harker,” he said, without looking up.

  The mayor did not answer.

  “You know he’s going to kill you, too.” Colter did not look up when he spoke those words, but kept right on digging the grave for Duncan Gates.

  Finally the mayor said in a frightened voice, “What are you . . . talking about?”

  The ground, Colter was pleased to see, was surprisingly soft, once you got through the sod. He dumped more dirt on the side. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Clint Warren. He wants this town. This land. For his little empire.”

  More dirt. It felt good, Colter thought, to be working like this, working muscles, sweating, not using his LeMat or his fists.

  “No,” Monroe sang out. “No . . . it’s Slade . . . and O’Rourke. They’re the ones fighting for control.”

  Colter stopped shoveling to wipe his brow. It was awful hot this day. Now he stared hard at the timid little mayor.

  “Yeah. They are. But they are both rank amateurs. All muscle, no brains. And not much money.” He returned to digging. “Oh, they make money, all right. A saloon. A gambling parlor. Probably bigger money than you’ll make as a barber . . . or an undertaker. But they’re not smart. At least, not as smart as Clint Warren.” He stopped again. “Not as tough as a rancher, either.” He glanced at the covered corpse of Duncan Gates. “You think either O’Rourke or Slade could have done that to a man? It would’ve sickened the both of them. They would have shot him, maybe stabbed him, or slit his throat. But to beat a man like that.” He sighed, shook his head, and went back to digging. Then Colter laughed. “You ever wonder who’ll be digging your grave, Jasper?”

  He had the grave deep enough, maybe not quite six feet deep, but Duncan Gates had been a skinny, little man—and not much of a man at that. Five feet, or four and a half, seemed plenty. After Colter climbed out of the hole, he dug the spade into the mound of dirt, and walked over to the body of Duncan Gates. He grabbed the head end, Monroe took the feet, and they carried him to the edge, and dropped him in the hole.

  “Anything you want to say?” Colter asked. He looked up at the mayor, whose head was bowed, and his hands clasped.

  Suddenly the mayor swatted at an insect that had landed on his collar.

  “What the hell is going on with all these damned grasshoppers?”

  * * *

  Colter dined that night in the lit
tle café with Mix Range, Jed Reno, Betsy McDonnell, and Mrs. Sien Slootmaekers, who kept lauding Betsy so much that Colter had to smile at how Betsy’s cheeks blushed. After supper, Mrs. Slootmaekers climbed into the buckboard and headed back to her farm, and Colter escorted Betsy back to the hotel. Then he and his deputies patrolled the streets, doing their rounds, checking the doors of the legitimate businesses that closed by six o’clock—not the saloons, cribs, and gambling parlors that wouldn’t close till around dawn.

  “You reckon that mayor will come around?” Reno asked.

  “I’ll keep working on him.”

  They walked past Paddy O’Rourke’s building—the big window still boarded up.

  “Kinda quiet tonight,” Mix Range said.

  Reno pointed the barrel of the Hawken across the street. “So’s Slade’s place.”

  Colter walked on, but stopped, turned back, and studied both buildings thoughtfully.

  “What you thinking?” Reno asked.

  “If O’Rourke was one of the aldermen of this town, why would Warren have his son throw him out the window?”

  Reno shrugged. “To get you into a brawl. Figured his boy could whip you.”

  “Figured wrong, he did,” Mix Range said.

  Colter shook his head. “Easier ways to draw me into a fight. That might be Warren’s way of telling O’Rourke that he’s been tossed out . . . of the business. . . the real business of Violence.” He looked over at Slade’s. “Which would give Slade reason to make a move.”

  “What kind of move?” Reno asked.

  “Take over O’Rourke’s,” Colter said. “To control the gambling, the prostitution, and the drinking in this town.”

  “What does Warren get out of that?”

  “One less rival. Only one bug he needs to crush under his boot heel.”

  Mix Range stepped on another locust, which caused Reno and Colter to laugh. Range looked at the bottom of his boot, and then picked up the mashed bug with his fingers, staring at it.

  “Good eating,” Reno said. “Grasshoppers.”