The Edge of Violence Read online

  “You’re not always funny, Reno,” Slade said.

  “You touch that hogleg, Slade, and you’ll never laugh again.”

  “I’d just like to know what that meeting was all about.”

  “Ask the mayor.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  The door opened. Another family came in, led by a stout man who looked like he had just stepped out of some painting of the Alps—if those were the right mountains. A tiny woman, who kept her head down, and two little girls, probably not yet ten years old, followed him. The door closed, cutting off January’s icy breath.

  “Goede avond,” the man said, as he removed his fur cap with the leather earmuffs. “Hoe gaat het met jou?”

  “Uh,” Reno said. “Yeah.”

  The man went to the food stores. “You need any . . . help . . . uh . . . yeah. . . .”

  They paid him little mind, but the husband and his wife started carrying on a conversation, while the two girls stood at their mother’s side. Well, they would be like the rest of those foreigners, Reno figured. They would get what they needed—rather, what they thought they needed—bring it to the counter, pay Reno in gold coins, and be on their way.

  “We were talking about the town meetin’.”

  Reno turned away from the sodbusters and stared into Slade’s cold eyes.

  “You were doing the talking, remember? I wasn’t at that meeting, either.”

  “In the middle, eh?” Slade’s head shook. He pulled up his black hat, which had been hanging on his back, secured with a latigo lace.

  “It suits me,” Reno said. “I’m just a little old merchant.”

  “People in the middle get run over, Reno. You might best remember that. You’re no fool. That’s why I come to talk to you. A town like Violence, well, there can be only one bull of the woods. You don’t want that title. Being an old man and all, with just a few more years left on this here earth.”

  Reno felt his ears reddening, but he merely clenched his fists and did not beat the one-armed Alabaman into the dirt. It might leave a bad impression on those Flemish-speaking newcomers, and Reno didn’t want them to take their business into town. After all, he had become a bit of a capitalist, much like ol’ Jim Bridger.

  “This town’ll be up for grabs, come spring. Me or the Mick. That’s what it boils down to. It’ll be a railroad town. Not full of damned idiots who can’t even speak no proper English. Not a bunch of fool farmers. And not even ranchers. Railroaders. Gamblers. Whores. Saloonkeepers. That’s where the money is. And me or O’Rourke will run Violence. You savvy that, I know.”

  Reno scratched an itch above his eye patch. “Don’t sound like there’ll be room for me.”

  “There’s always room for folks who mind their own business, Reno. Who don’t get run over by a train.” He turned around, headed for the door, and stopped by some crates the latest freight had brought and Reno had yet to unpack. “I hear tell that killer in Oregon didn’t take the job.”

  “What killer would that be?” Reno asked.

  “Tim Colter.”

  Reno just stared at the saloonkeeper with his one good eye.

  “A man like Colter showed good sense. He knew what would happen to any marshal in Violence. He’d get buried. You don’t want to be marshal of Violence, do you, Jed?”

  So they were on a first-name basis now.

  “A man with your brains, Slade.” He emphasized the name, so the Alabaman would know that they were not on that first-name basis. “A man like you, he’d already know that they asked me to take that job back in November. And I said no.” The farmer was bringing sacks of flour, coffee, sugar, and beans to the counter. “You see. I’m just a storekeeper.”

  The farmer asked, “Kan je mij helpen?”

  Reno looked at him blankly, then again faced the gambler.

  “I’ve got nothing against storekeepers, Reno,” Slade said. “Especially those that can take care of themselves. Like this story I hear about one gent at a trading post who managed to kill three men trying to rob him. Then dumped their bodies, so that nobody would be the wiser. That’s a man who’s smart and strong. I’ll be seein’ you, Jed.”

  The door opened, quickly closed, and Micah Slade was gone.

  Reno turned and tried to figure out how much he should charge for those supplies that kept coming to the countertop, but his mind wasn’t on business. It was on Micah Slade. So now Jed Reno knew who had sent those cutthroats to rob him back in November.

  He didn’t charge the homesteaders enough, but figured he had made enough money already. When they were gone, Reno pulled in the latchstring through the door, set the bolt, and wandered back to the storeroom, where his pallet lay on the floor. Warm and toasty. He found his jug of his own blend of Taos Lightning; then leaning against the earthen wall, he sipped his liquor, and picked up the copy of Harper’s Weekly.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ferre Slootmaekers was a pretty good kid. Tall and gangly, but he had no trouble lifting forty- or even a hundred-pound sacks, and even heavier boxes. Plus he spoke passable English, and understood all that crazy talk the immigrants kept speaking. Which is why Jed Reno hired him. It was the first time Reno had paid anybody, unless you wanted to count that Nez Perce boy that Reno had helping him with the traps back in ’38 and ’39, or the fat Shoshone squaw he had wintered with way back in 1833 through 1834.

  February came, and winter—real winter—roared in with it. The trains stopped coming. Most men stopped working. People died, just up and froze to death, and were stacked in one of the soddies that no one had claimed as a home, to wait till spring, when the ground finally thawed out again so that the dead could be properly buried.

  And then, along toward the end of the month, a false spring arrived. Oh, Jed Reno could not tell anyone what the exact day was. Sure, he had a stack of those calendars the U.P. had dropped off to sell, but Reno never had looked at one, except the handful he sold to some Flemish folks, and even one of the Warren boys, back in December. Reno didn’t need a calendar to know what time of the year it was, and he had been in this wild country long enough to know that this spring would not last, that winter would dump another two or three storms on Violence before it really warmed up.

  But twenty-five degrees felt downright tropical after thirty and forty below. A train made its way to town, dropped off all manner of supplies at the U.P. yards, then chugged on west down Clear Creek toward wherever the end of the line was by now. Folks came out of their huts or their cabins or their balmy hotel rooms to see the first rays of sun they’d noticed in a coon’s age. The piano at The Blarney Stone began playing again, and so did the banjo man at Slade’s Saloon.

  It brought folks to Reno’s trading post, too.

  When the last sodbuster left, Reno looked at his ledger, or what passed for bookkeeping to his way of thinking. He frowned. Like everyone else—except those working for the railroad, or Micah Slade or Paddy O’Rourke—most money had vanished. The Flemish-speaking foreigners had spent their last gold coins, and now Reno had to put them on credit or barter with them. He studied the recent entries.

  Some family called De Vroom, if even Reno had spelled that right, owed him a bushel of beets. Jed Reno despised beets. Wouldn’t touch the damned things, but he thought maybe he could sell some to Harker or Murden or Gates, come summer. The Joossens promised him two pigs. Whenever they got their pigs. He shaved a better point on his pencil and scratched through one name: .

  The old lady had gone crazy and killed her two kids at the end of January, and Mr.Vandroogenbroeck, after discovering what had happened, wandered off into the blizzard. Clint Warren, the old widower who wanted to ranch with his boys, had found the man, frozen stiff a week later. Reno would not be collecting the barley from the Vandroogenbroecks’ first crops.

  “Boy,” Reno called out as he closed the book, and tossed the pencil onto some pelts he had swapped Mrs. Jutta Claes for soap. Soap. Who would take a bath in winter?

  Ferre Slootmaekers immediate
ly put down the load of potatoes on a table and practically ran to the counter.

  “Sir?” the kid said. The word was English, but the accent sure wasn’t.

  “How many times, boy, do I have to tell you not to go around ‘sirring’ me.”

  Ferre Slootmaekers blinked, and stared, his mouth open. His English had its limits.

  Shaking his head, Reno reached below the counter and pulled out the beaded buckskin pouch. One of them. He had buried a few before the snows got too heavy, for safekeeping. Jed Reno didn’t trust that guy Custer, and Reno had never cared much for banks anyway. Back in Bowling Green, Louisville, and St. Louis, he had seen plenty of those places go bust—or heard that the banker had left town in the middle of the night, after cleaning out the vault.

  He pulled out a double eagle, felt the gold coin in his fingers, and, with a heavy sigh, finally slid it across the counter in front of the sixteen-year-old from Mechelen, wherever in blazes that place was, or the Dijlestad, which the kid also sometimes said had been his home.

  Again, Ferre Slootmaekers blinked and stared. Although his mouth remained open, no words came out, neither Flemish nor English, or Mechelenish or Dijlestadish, for that matter, or whatever he was supposed to be speaking.

  “Boy,” Reno said. “They ain’t no such thing as slavery in this country no more—not even way to hell out here in Idaho Territory. That’s for you. You been working for me for right about a month now. That’s your pay.”

  The kid blinked again.

  Reno pushed the coin closer, and then pointed at the boy, even touching his chest. “For you.”

  Now, if Ferre Slootmaekers had been Cheyenne or Shoshone or Blackfoot or Arapaho or even Blackfoot or Nez Perce, Jed Reno could have carried on a conversation with the boy. But these sodbusters from wherever the hell Flemish was didn’t even know sign language.

  “Pay,” the kid finally managed to say, “for me.”

  “That’s right. Pay. You get paid. Once a month.”

  The boy smiled brighter and slid the coin into his pocket. Oddly enough, that sight make Jed Reno feel practically like he was becoming a real human being. But he was sure that feeling would pass directly.

  “Remember,” Reno told the boy as he went to the coatrack. “You got to work tomorrow, and so I expect you to be here right after your ma makes your breakfast.”

  The boy put on his coat, muffler, scarf, and gloves, pulled open the door, and let another coated man inside. Ferre Slootmaekers stopped and stared past the newcomer’s shoulder at Reno.

  “That’s all right, boy. He ain’t here to buy nothing. Are you, Marshal?”

  Cutter, part owner of the town’s hotel and with a new job since the first of February, chuckled as he pulled off his woolen scarf. “That’s right.”

  Reno had to wave at the boy, to let him know it was all right to leave. The door shut, and Cutter walked to the counter, his new badge gleaming.

  “What do you make of this weather?” Cutter asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “Reckon it’ll last?”

  “No. ”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Too early.”

  Cutter pulled out a cigar, bit off the end, and spit into the cuspidor. He then fished out a cigar from one of his frock coat’s inside pockets and held it out toward Reno.

  “Pipe man,” Reno said, shaking his head.

  The cigar disappeared.

  “Town’s coming alive,” Cutter said. “Warm weather. Train came in and dropped off some more railroad workers. I might be about to earn the fifteen a month I get paid to wear this.” He pressed an index finger on the five-point badge, then wiped off the smudge with the cuffs of his shirtsleeve.

  The cigar was fired up, and Cutter took several pulls before the end finally glowed. He drew in a deep breath, held the smoke, and sent it skyward in a perfect smoke ring. Jed Reno always marveled at men who could do that, but he kept his amazement to himself.

  “This’ll be a big night. For the law.” Cutter removed the cigar. His eyes narrowed. “I figure I might need some help. I’d like to offer you the job as my deputy. Even if it’s only for tonight, or, well, maybe as long as the weather holds.”

  Reno’s head was shaking before Cutter even finished the sentence.

  “I can pay you ten dollars. I mean, the town council will pay you ten. You know how much I get.”

  Reno kept shaking that head.

  “O’Rourke and Slade are trying to get control of this town, Jed. This’ll be our chance to show them that the law has come to Violet, that they need to move on down the line, to the next Hell on Wheels.”

  “Like I told you gents last fall, I ain’t no lawman.”

  “But you can’t just stand in the middle, Jed.”

  This time, Jed Reno laughed. “Cutter, you ain’t the first person to tell me that. But I been doing pretty fine just tending my trading post.”

  Micah Slade had told him that. So had the main faro dealer at The Blarney Stone. So had Mayor Jasper Monroe. So had Paddy O’Rourke two weeks earlier. Hell, so had Jed Reno himself. Only Jed Reno seldom listened to anyone, even himself.

  “Well, I thought I’d ask,” Cutter said.

  Reno pointed. “On account you don’t carry a gun yourself.”

  “You don’t need a gun, Jed,” Cutter said, “when you’re the law. The law speaks for itself.”

  “A forty-four Colt speaks louder.”

  “If I carry a gun, the law gets no respect. I have to show men like Slade and O’Rourke that the law is bigger than the gun.”

  Reno studied Cutter harder now. The man ran a hotel, but he had sand. “Cutter,” Reno said after a long thought, “I wish you well.”

  “See you tomorrow, Jed.”

  * * *

  He sat on his pallet, sipping his whiskey—real bourbon whiskey shipped all the way from Kentucky, and not the hooch he made himself—and reading, for the countless time, the Harper’s Weekly. He had to thank his parents and Mr. Sneed, the wheelwright in Louisville, for teaching him his letters and how to read and even to a bit of ciphering. That gave him an advantage, he had learned. Jim Bridger and even Kit Carson couldn’t write their own names—not that being illiterate had hindered Bridger or Carson.

  This time, though, Reno looked at the drawings that illustrated the magazine. He rubbed his fingers through his beard. He thought back two decades, and looked at the picture again. And he started to re-read that article when he heard the gunshots.

  For a while, Jed Reno ignored what he had heard. Two more shots sounded. He sipped more bourbon out of his tin cup. “Welcome to Violence,” he said to himself, and he made himself laugh at his joke. “That ain’t funny,” he said. He started to refill his cup from the bottle, but then cursed and pulled himself to his feet.

  “Man who starts talking to himself is loco,” Reno said. “Ain’t he? Yes, sir, he is. And Jed Reno ain’t out of his mind. Not yet. Is he? Damn, stop this silly talk.”

  Once he had pulled on his coat and hat, he grabbed the .44 Colt, stuck it in his waistband, and thought of something else. When he stepped outside into the cold night, he was gripping his Hawken rifle.

  CHAPTER 10

  Yellow lights cast an eerie glow on the street that divided Violet, or Violence, in half. Aloysius Murden and Duncan Gates had named it Union Street, in honor of the U.P. Railroad. On a night like this one, most of the railroaders called it Hell Street.

  As Jed Reno rode his piebald mare down the street, he saw the shadow he assumed was black-clad Micah Slade standing in front of Slade’s Saloon, flanked by several spectators. The men, in sleeve garters and fancy vests of shiny brocade, were all well-illuminated by the lanterns hanging inside the saloon—except for Micah Slade, of course. Yet most of the attention lay directly across Union Street, at The Blarney Stone. A crowd had circled around the boardwalk made of excess railroad ties, spilling onto the street of snow, ice, and mud. A few of the men heard Reno’s horse and turned ar
ound. One of them held a floppy-brimmed felt hat in his hands.

  As he dismounted the mare, Reno nodded at Eugene Harker, the freedman who had an assortment of jobs in town. The black man returned the greeting, and Reno led his horse to a hitching rail by the Yost & Cutter Hotel, next door to Paddy O’Rourke’s gambling den. The hitching rail was vacant. Town was bustling, but few people in Violence owned horses. Even the sodbusters who spoke Flemish were waiting till spring before they brought in their old nags or stout horses and mules to try to turn this country into farmland. Violence, or Violet, was a railroad town. The train brought people here . . . or carried them away.

  Reno, still wielding the Hawken, walked through ankle-deep snow until he reached Harker. A big man, Jed Reno had no trouble seeing over the shoulders of most of the men who stood in front of him. They had formed a semicircle around the front of Paddy O’Rourke’s gambling den, and there, standing before the front doors of his new building, stood O’Rourke himself, thumbs in his waistband, talking to two of his faro dealers on either side of him.

  Reno looked away from O’Rourke and at the man who commanded practically everyone’s attention.

  That man lay facedown in the mud and muck and snow, arms outstretched over his head, the hat crown-side-down in the snow.

  “Hell.” That was Reno’s way of begging his pardon as he pushed his way through the throng of mostly railroaders, about three deep, until he made it to the clearing. Eugene Harker came right behind him, mumbling something that Reno didn’t quite catch. Well, one of Harker’s odd jobs was undertaking, and he had business this night.

  Reno knelt, keeping the Hawken balanced on his thighs, and took in a deep breath. The cold air burned his lungs. Steam rose from the two bloodstained holes in the dead man’s coat. Bullet holes . . . in the man’s back.

  It was a frock coat, tan with navy stripes, with a collar of black velvet. Jed Reno recognized the coat. Keeping his left hand on the Hawken, he lowered his right to the dead man’s neck, past the woolen scarf, and moved forefinger and thumb down to the throat, feeling for the throbbing of a vein, which Reno knew he would not feel.