The Edge of Violence Read online

The gunman smiled. “So . . . ten percent. Agreeable.”

  “Yes . . . sir . . . Mr. . . . Range . . . I . . . understand . . . and . . . ten . . . percent . . . is . . . just . . . fine.”

  “Good.” The gunman slapped the top of the keg. “You might as well pay the first month now. Say fifty dollars.”

  The sweaty man blinked.

  “I’ll wait.” Mix Range pointed at a jug. “And I’ll have some of that there top-shelf dust-cutter while I wait. On the house.”

  “Of course.”

  The sweaty man backed away toward the cashbox, until Mix Range snapped his fingers.

  “Oh.” The man hurried back, grabbed the jug, put it in front of the killer, started to move, before he recalled that he might need to put a glass in front of Mix Range. He did that. And started to move again. That’s when he noticed Tim Colter.

  The sweaty man froze. His eyes widened. His mouth hung open, drawing flies, which were abundant in a place like this.

  Slowly the gunman named Mix Range looked for a mirror, but there were no mirrors in The Cheyenne Saloon. He picked up the jug, poured a few fingers, and brought the glass to his lips. Before he turned around, he finished the rotgut.

  Tim Colter sized the man up. Confident, hooking both thumbs in the gunbelt. The rig, Colter noticed, held two Colts, which did not match. The locations of the grips of both revolvers told Colter that Mix Range was right-handed.

  “You’re a quiet cuss,” Mix Range said. “I’ll give you that much. Quiet. Like a little ol’ mousey that’s scared of daylight.”

  “You’re not,” Colter said.

  “’Specially when my sons start talkin’.” The gunman pointed at the two guns.

  “The way I see it,” Colter said. “You were trying to extort money from the proprietor of this drinking establishment. That’s against the law.”

  “ ‘Extort’?” Range let loose with a loud belly laugh. “Hey, stupid,” he called out to the sweating man, “this gent must be educated. I didn’t know they let mouses into . . . what’s that them places is called . . . uni-colleges?”

  “Guess they don’t have any of those in a backwoods place like Alabama.”

  The man quit laughing. His left hand came loose from the gunbelt, the arm stretching forward, the finger pointing straight across the dark saloon at Tim Colter’s face.

  “You best watch what you say, boy.”

  “It’s hard to watch . . . words.”

  Now Mix Range’s right hand came away from the holster, and hovered over the .44-caliber Army Colt on the man-killer’s right hip.

  “Iffen you know ’bout Alabama, then you must know who I am.”

  “Mix Range.”

  The man seemed to relax, and let out a little breath. The thin smile returned.

  “So you’ve heard about me, eh?”

  “Some.”

  “You . . . from Texas? Bounty hunter? Or you just like them badge-toters I killed down south.”

  Colter remained quiet.

  “I don’t see no tin star pinned on your mousey chest, boy, so I don’t reckon you is a real lawman. But I’ve already buried one fellow this day—had to even pay a whole dollar to get him planted—but, usually, I don’t get no sleep unless I kill me two gents. You look like a suitable candidate. Oh, wait. I said I killed two gents. I meant . . . I killed two mouses.”

  “That how you want it?”

  Now the sweaty man found his voice. “Please don’t start no gunplay in my place. You’ll shoot up the whiskey kegs. And it’s expensive to haul that stuff by rail or wagon all the way out to this infernal territory.”

  Tim Colter had to give both the owner of the saloon and the cold-blooded killer credit. The sweaty man was a businessman. And hailing from Alabama, the killer named Range had manners.

  “Suit you?” Mix Range asked.

  Colter gestured toward the batwing doors.

  “After you,” he said.

  Mix Range laughed as he walked through the doors and onto the warped, muddy boardwalk. But the laughter died just as Tim Colter, coming behind the killer, stopped the batwing doors from slamming.

  “What the—” Mix Range’s right hand darted for the holstered Colt, but instantly stopped.

  Uneducated, an idiot, and a callous killer, but not that much of a fool. He was staring down the cavernous barrel of a Hawken rifle. That rifle was held, unwavering, in the hands of a one-eyed giant in buckskins.

  “That’s right, boy. ’Cause one more inch lower with that gunhand of yours, and your brains—if you got any—will be seasoning that drawing there of those frothy beers on the wall.”

  Colter slipped past the unmoving gunman. He took the Colt from the right holster, and shoved it into his waistband. He found the other revolver, a Navy .36, and slipped it inside the pocket on his jacket.

  “This what you call a fair fight?” Mix Range asked.

  “No. It’s what I call an arrest.” Colter drew his own LeMat and pressed the barrel against Mix Range’s spine.

  “Arrest. There ain’t no law in this burg.”

  “Let’s call it a citizen’s arrest,” Colter said.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  They had a crowd. Men and women piled out of the saloons, brothels, gambling halls, and even some actual respectable businesses. Colter looked down the north side of Union Street, his eyes stopping when they reached Slade’s Saloon. He saw the man standing out front, leaning against a wooden column, hands stuck in his deep front pockets. That man, from Jed Reno’s description, would be the owner of that bucket of blood, Micah Slade. Micah Slade would have been the one who sent Mix Range to bully the owner of The Cheyenne Saloon. It wouldn’t be the man in the green plaid sack suit and bowler hat out in front of The Blarney Stone. From what Colter had heard, Paddy O’Rourke would never hire a fool who had worn the gray during the Rebellion. The Irishman had not fought in the war, of course, for North or South. In fact, the tales said he ran away from the draft. But he was from New York, and like most New Yorkers, he despised Southerners and the South.

  “What you gonna charge me with then?” Mix Range asked. “Other than extort?”

  “Murder.”

  “You mean the Yank I killed this day. That was self-defense.”

  “You can prove that at the inquest.”

  “The . . . in . . . ‘in-what’?”

  “Inquest. Let me explain the law, Mix. A crime or an alleged crime is committed. A coroner must determine what happened, and an inquest is held. Well . . . let’s forget all about that. It’ll take too long. Do you have a lawyer?”

  “I’ve got a gun.”

  “You had a gun. Two guns. The Navy needs cleaning. Is that how you treat your weapons in Alabama and Texas?”

  “Listen . . . I know all about miner’s courts.”

  Reno stepped back, finally lowering the giant flintlock rifle. Colter shoved the gunman onto the street.

  “This isn’t a mining town, though.”

  “It’s just a . . . Well . . . it don’t mean nothin’.”

  Another prod sent the killer walking down Union Street toward The Blarney Stone and Slade’s Saloon.

  “And a miner’s court is usually worthless . . . in the eyes of a judge. A real judge. With a real jury. And real lawyers. Besides, I’m sure the authorities in Texas will appreciate having a chance for you to defend yourself in the Lone Star State. You might even get off.”

  When they reached Slade’s Saloon, Mix Range stopped, as Tim Colter expected he would. Colter kept the LeMat aimed at the killer’s back, but he no longer prodded the killer. Range turned and stared at Micah Slade.

  “You gotta get me out of this fix, Slade,” Range said, and he no longer sounded confident, but like the poor piece of Southern trash that he was. “Them boys down in Texas. They’ll string me up, sure as shootin’, iffen I get hauled back down there.”

  Slade grinned. “You might hang here, boy. But I’m guessin’ you know th
at already.”

  Micah Slade was easy for Tim Colter to size up. There was the patch over his left eye and a left arm in a black silk scarf that served as a sling. He, too, carried a pair of Navy Colts, but those were stuck butt forward in a green sash, and Tim Colter had no reason to believe Slade’s guns needed cleaning. He dressed in black. His accent was just as Southern, but maybe more educated, than Mix Range’s.

  “But you’s an Alabama boy your ownself,” Mix Range pleaded.

  Slade ignored the gunman, who appeared to be close to bursting into tears. Just like most gunmen. Most bullies. Take away their guns, and they were gutless wonders.

  “So what exactly is going on here, sir?” Slade bowed slightly, but with no respect, at Colter. “Was there some disturbance in The Cheyenne Saloon?”

  “There was a disturbance in Slade’s Saloon earlier,” Colter said.

  Micah Slade grinned. “So to speak. But we buried that matter this morning.” He nodded slightly at Mix Range. “He took care of it. You see, stranger, that’s the law in Violence. I’m surprised that one-eyed rapscallion didn’t let you know that before you came out here.”

  “That’s the law?” Tim Colter sounded incredulous.

  “That’s the law.” Micah Slade bowed.

  “Well, Slade.” Colter prodded the weak-kneed gunman again with the LeMat. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a new kind of law here in Violence.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “Where is the jail?” Colter asked as they made their way down Union Street, past Second and Fourth Street toward Sixth, the last street on the western side of Violence. Odd, Colter thought, but the odd-numbered streets ran on the eastern side of town, with the town divided by The Blarney Stone and Slade’s Saloon.

  “Well, boy,” Reno said, “I didn’t exactly expect you to come back with a prisoner. Figured you’d kill him. Or I would.”

  “No jail.”

  “Nope.”

  Colter let out a mirthless chuckle. “And where was the late marshal’s office?”

  “Where he worked.”

  “Which was?”

  “Hotel. But it wasn’t nowhere nears as fancy as it is now.”

  They walked a bit more before Reno added, “But I reckon you could use my storage room as a jail.” He let out a little chuckle.

  “I’d rather not do that. Get your storage room all shot up when Slade tries to bust this two-bit assassin out of there.”

  Reno nodded. “I’d rather not get myself shot up when Slade tries that.”

  “Don’t worry, pard. We’ll see what the citizens committee says.”

  Reno stopped. “What citizens committee?”

  “You’ll see directly.”

  * * *

  Tim Colter wondered how long it would take. He had barely fished the manacles from the pack mule, secured Mix Range’s right hand to one cuff and the other to the solid bottom rail of Jed Reno’s corral, had accepted a cup of coffee Reno brought out from the post, unsaddled his black stallion and taken just a few of the packs off the mule, and finally settled onto an overturned crate, leaning against the wall of the post, talking about this and that with Jed Reno, when he saw them coming.

  “Oh,” Jed Reno said, “you mean them folks. That citizens committee.”

  They were led by a man who introduced himself as Mayor Jasper Monroe. He stressed the “mayor” in his announcement. The roundness of his stomach told Colter that he drank too much beer, and his hands lacked any calluses. Barber and undertaker, he said, but Reno had already told him that Eugene Harker, the freedman, did most of the barbering and burying these days. There was no embalming. Not out here. And few coffins, either. Bodies would be wrapped in blankets, if the deceased had a blanket, and buried in the ever-growing cemetery on the hill behind the town.

  Eugene Harker was there, too. His hands were tough, and his eyes wary. Muscles bulged from digging those graves and, before that, swinging a sixteen-pound sledgehammer for the Union Pacific.

  Henry Yost ran the hotel, and collected a lot more money now that his partner, B.B. Cutter, had been shot, killed, planted, and mostly forgotten. He wore a sack suit of navy and gray stripes, a bowler hat, with a nose and cheek that had been burned and blistered by the sun. He was also out of breath. Every single one of them had walked from town.

  Aloysius Murden had to weigh close to three hundred pounds. He spoke with such a thick Yankee accent—Massachusetts, the fat man said—that Tim Colter gave up trying to understand half of what he said. He didn’t need to listen to Murden, anyway, since his rail-thin partner, with the eyeglasses sliding precariously close to the end of his nose, repeated everything Murden said. The partner’s name was Duncan Gates.

  Gates and Murden ran the land office. They had platted the town. They had brought in all those foolish but hungry and well-spirited farmers. They had also invested in other businesses, and heaped praises on the Union Pacific as if it were the spirit of Abraham Lincoln.

  The last member of the citizens committee surprised both Colter and Reno.

  Paddy O’Rourke, the gambling kingpin and procurer of prostitutes, stood off to the side, grinning at Colter and Reno, and maybe even laughing inside at his fellow councilmen.

  “I’ll be blunt,” Monroe finally said. “We don’t want to turn Violet into a shooting gallery. So we’d like you to ride out of town. Back to Washington.”

  “Oregon,” Jed Reno corrected. “And you come to me last year, begging for a lawman. I give you his name.”

  “He turned us down,” Monroe said. “Remember?”

  “He turned you down. When I writ him, he come. He’s what you need.”

  Yost spoke up. “We had a lawman. Remember. Remember what happened?”

  “That’s why I sent for this kid,” Reno said.

  O’Rourke cackled. “Fifteen bucks a month, mister.” He eyed those beady eyes at Tim Colter. “A badge. Ain’t worth dying for, is it?”

  “Don’t plan on dying,” Colter said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Monroe sang out. “The offer has been rescinded. You have no authority. Not in my town.”

  So it was his town. Not Gates’s and Murden’s town, and those men had put up a much heavier investment than Jasper Monroe. Colter shot the mayor a curious look, wondering what had changed the barber/undertaker’s tune. Paddy O’Rourke? Or maybe Micah Slade?

  “So if you don’t have a badge,” O’Rourke said, “then you don’t have the authority to hold that little vermin right there. I’ll take him off your hands. I’ll run him out so he never comes back to this sweet, peaceful little burg again.”

  Colter looked at his prisoner. Mix Range was sweating, and fear crawled through his skin. Range knew what O’Rourke would do to a man who had drawn pay from Micah Slade. Actually, Tim Colter enjoyed seeing a blackheart like Range sweat, but he dropped his fingers into his vest pocket and pulled out a tin badge.

  “But I do have a badge,” he said.

  He pinned it on the lapel.

  Murden stepped closer. His lips parted as he read the black lettering on the tarnished five-point star.

  “ ‘Deputy U.S. Marshal’?” This time, Tim Colter had no trouble understanding Murden’s words.

  Colter wasn’t sure why he had changed his mind before he had left Salem. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He had not changed his mind, but Betsy McDonnell had changed it for him. Getting that deputy marshal’s job had been her idea, and she had once taught school before she had married. Which meant she knew how to persuade folks to do things they didn’t want to do. If women could vote, Tim Colter figured that woman would be governor of Oregon, maybe even a U.S. senator. She had laid out some reasons, and they sounded good. A U.S. marshal had more clout, more authority, and if Violet, Idaho Territory, was just as tough as it seemed to be, well, then perhaps the Union Pacific executives would want it cleaned up, too. So Colter had gone back to U.S. Marshal Albert Zeiber and taken him up on that offer. Zeiber had sent a letter of recommendation to the terr
itorial marshal in Boise, and an Express rider had raced back with a signed commission for Tim Colter as a deputy marshal for Idaho Territory.

  “With the backing of Congressman Grenville Dodge, Thomas Durant, and the Union Pacific Railroad,” Colter said. “The railroad, and a lot of other people, aren’t too happy about what has been going on here, boys. Too many killings make things a bit harder trying to complete this grand project of a transcontinental railroad.”

  “I still prefer a big ditch,” Jed Reno said without much interest as he tamped tobacco into his pipe.

  “This gonna be your office?” O’Rourke asked in his thick Irish brogue.

  “No.” Colter shook his head. “Don’t want my friend’s place getting torn apart, and I don’t think it’ll be big enough for my jail. No, I figured you’d be coming to see me, and I wanted our first meeting to be away from town. More private, you see.”

  “Private?” the mayor asked.

  “Just without distractions, such as men taking potshots at me. Or my prisoner.”

  “Why’d they do that?” the mayor asked.

  “To keep him from talking.” Colter rose. “Now, I don’t think Mix Range is that type of gent. He hires on, he gives his loyalty to his boss. He knows he’ll likely be going to the grave, probably by taking a long drop off the gallows, but he has known that a long time.” Colter looked down. Mix Range seemed about ready to soil his britches. “But he won’t name his boss. He’ll die game, die quiet. Even if he is promised a lesser sentence, he won’t talk. That’s not what a man like Mix Range is made of. So he’ll die, alone, get buried in a pauper’s field, and his boss and other killers will keep on making money and living and drinking and whoring and having a fun old time on this earth.”

  Now Colter walked away. “But his boss, he can’t take that chance. So he’ll come gunning for Range. Well, not him. The boss man won’t personally come to kill Mix, to keep him quiet. If he were that kind of man, he wouldn’t have hired Mix Range in the first place. So he’ll send another killer to shut up Mix. And, probably, another killer to shut up the man who killed Mix. Gets to be a never-ending cycle, you see.”

  Colter was back at his spot.