Deadly Trail

by William W. Johnstone

  She heard her mother cry out.

  “Shut up, bitch,” Strayhorn’s voice growled.

  “You are hurting me, Señor,” Maria’s mother replied.

  “Hurting you gives me pleasure,” Strayhorn said. “And you are in the business of giving me pleasure.”

  There was a loud smack, and Maria’s mother cried out again.

  “Shut up, bitch! I know you like it! All you Mexican whores like it.”

  “Maria,” Esteban asked. “Why is Mama crying?”

  “Shh,” Maria answered very quietly. She held her finger across her lips. “Remember, when Mama is on the other side of the blanket with a visitor, there is to be no talking.”

  “But I am frightened,” Esteban said.

  “Do not be frightened, poqueño,” Maria said. She had a piece of string, tied in a circle, and she put her fingers into the string, then began showing her brothers all the tricks she could perform. It kept them so entertained over the next few minutes that they were unaware of the building crescendo of sound behind the blanket that Maria knew signaled the beginning of the end of the Anglo’s visit.

  When she knew it was over, she handed the string to Esteban, suggesting that he try to manipulate it as she had. Esteban’s efforts kept him and Juan occupied, which was what she wanted, because she needed some time to carry out her plan.

  Moving quietly to the part of the room where the cooking utensils were kept, Maria found a butcher knife. Then, before her mother’s visitor appeared from the other side of the blanket, she went outside to wait beside the outhouse. The smell was strong and she shivered in the cold.

  In the cantina, someone was playing a guitar.

  From the American saloon she heard loud laughter.

  A cat screeched in the dark.

  Finally, Strayhorn stepped outside the small house.

  “Señor?” Maria called.

  “What? Who is it? Who is there?” Strayhorn asked.

  Maria stepped out from the shadow of the outhouse into the silver splash of moonlight.

  “Who are you?” Strayhorn asked. Then, when he examined her more closely, he recognized her. “Wait a minute, you are the whore’s daughter, ain’t you?” He pointed toward the house behind him with a jerk of his thumb. “I seen you in there.”

  “Si, Señor. I am Maria.”

  “Well, what do you want, Maria?”

  “I want one dollar.”

  “A dollar? Haw!” Strayhorn said. “Now, why would I want to give you a dollar?”

  “Because I will give myself to you for one dollar,” Maria said. Quickly, she pulled her dress up over her head, then off, holding the bunched-up cloth in her right hand. She stood before him, totally nude, her young body barely mature, with small breasts and a silky fuzz of emerging pubic hair. Her skin quickly filled with gooseflesh, brought on by the chill of the night air.

  “Damn!” Strayhorn said.

  “You do want this, don’t you?” Maria asked. With her left hand, she touched herself. “I have seen how you look at me when you visit Mama.”

  “Well, now, you’re gettin’ started a little early, ain’t you, girlie?” Strayhorn asked. “All right, if you want to learn what it’s all about, I’ll show you.”

  “One dollar?” Maria asked.

  “A dollar? Girlie, I didn’t give your mama but a quarter. But I ain’t never had me a whore as young you, so you might just be worth it.”

  Maria waited until Strayhorn stuck his hand into his pocket, then, dropping the bunched-up dress, she lunged at him with the butcher knife.

  “What the hell?” Strayhorn gasped when he saw what she intended. Moving quickly, he stepped to one side managing to avoid her rush. Then he reached out to grab her knife hand, causing Maria to lose her only advantage, the element of surprise. Strayhorn easily took the knife from her hand; then he pushed her up against the outhouse, clamping his left hand over Maria’s mouth so she couldn’t cry out.

  “See what you did?” Strayhorn said. “I was goin’ to give you that dollar. Now I’m goin’ to get it for nothin’.”

  From their vantage point at the top of the hill, Hennessey, Taylor, and Hodge Decker, a somewhat shorter-than-average man they had recently met, could hear the driver whistling and calling to the six-horse team as they strained and struggled to pull the stagecoach up the long hill.

  “I hear ’im comin’,” Hennessey said. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Shouldn’t we have told Strayhorn what we’re doing?” Taylor asked.

  “Why?” Hennessey replied. “You heard him the same as I did. He said he didn’t care what we did until next Tuesday. Boomer set this job up for us, and Teech is the one who told us to go see Boomer.”

  “Yeah, but—” Taylor began, but Hennessey interrupted him.

  “Yeah, but what?” Hennessey said. “Without any money, what were we supposed to do? Starve? We need to get a little money from somewhere, and robbing a stagecoach is about as good a way as any.”

  The whistles and shouts of the driver grew louder as the stage came closer.

  “All right, get ready,” Hennessey said. “It’ll be here any minute now.”

  When the coach reached to top of the long hill, it stopped.

  “All right, folks, we’re goin’ to let the team take a breather here,” the driver called down to his passengers. “You can stretch your legs here. Ladies, there is a necessary on the left side of the road. Gents, there is one on the right.”

  The doors opened on either side of the coach and the passengers, four men and one woman, got out. The passengers started toward the little outhouses that had been put here for that purpose, while the driver climbed down and began examining his team. He checked the harness on each horse, spoke gently to them, then turned to go back to the coach. That was when he saw Hennessey, Taylor, and Decker standing there with their guns drawn.

  “Who the hell are you?” the driver asked.

  “Who we are don’t matter none,” Hennessey answered. “We’ll take whatever you’re carryin’.”

  “Mister, I ain’t carryin’ nothin’,” the driver said. “Maybe you noticed that I don’t even have a shotgun guard ridin’ with me.”

  “Check it out, Decker,” Hennessey said.

  Decker climbed up onto the driver’s seat and looked under the seat.

  “Here’s a mail bag,” he said.

  “Throw it down.”

  “Mister, don’t you know it’s a federal law to steal the mail?”

  Hennessey laughed. “There ain’t no law wrote that I ain’t done broke,” he said. “Do you think I care whether it’s a federal law or not?”

  Decker tossed down the bag, which was closed by a draw rope.

  “Go through it, Taylor,” Hennessey said. “See if there’s anything there.”

  Taylor opened the bag, then began rifling through the letters, opening several of the envelopes. After a minute or two, he threw the bag down in frustration.

  “Nothin’ here,” he said.

  “That’s what I told you,” the driver said.

  There was the sound of laughter and conversation as some of the passengers returned from the necessary. They stopped in shock when they reached the edge of the road.

  “What is this? What’s going on here?” one of them asked. The man who asked the question was wearing a three-piece suit. He was overweight and, though he didn’t have a beard, he did have sideburns than ran down either side of his face like saddlebags. Several chins worked their way from his rubber lips down to what would have been his neck, if his neck could be seen.

  “We’re collecting a toll,” Hennessey said. “Give us all your money.”

  “What? See here, you have no right to—” His protest was interrupted when Hennessey fired a bullet at the ground near his feet. The bullet ricocheted into the woods behind, the shot and whine echoing back from the nearby mountains. The expression in the man’s eyes turned from anger to fear.

  “Whatever you are carryin’
isn’t worth your life, is it?” Hennessey asked.

  The overweight man shook his head.

  “Then do what I tell you. Give us your money,” Hennessey ordered. He looked at the others, all of whom had returned to the coach by now. “All of you,” he said. “Give us whatever money you are carrying.”

  Frightened and with shaking hands, the others pulled out their wallets and emptied them. Only the woman, who, seeing what was going on, had remained hidden off the road, escaped.

  “Hey,” Taylor said with a broad smile. “This fat old fart was carrying over one hundred dollars!”

  “And here’s fifty,” Decker said.

  “Damn, this one don’t have but three dollars here,” Taylor said after examining one of the others.

  “Take it,” Hennessey called back to Taylor. “Three dollars will buy a lot of beer.”

  Taylor chuckled. “Yeah, it will at that, wont it?” he said, putting the money in his pocket.

  Hennessey walked up to the team and put his pistol to the head of one of the horses and pulled the trigger. The horse fell and the others reacted in fright.

  “Why did you do that?” the driver asked.

  “Just to keep you folks busy for a while,” Hennessey said. He looked at Taylor and Decker. “All right, we’ve got what we came for. Let’s go.”

  When Hennessey, Taylor, and Decker showed up at the Saloon the next Thursday to meet with Strayhorn and Teech, they saw four more men with them. The four were Loomis, Kale, Malone, and Mills. Hennessey had met them since coming to Dorena, but he didn’t know any of them from before.

  “Well, I see you boys managed to survive,” Strayhorn said mockingly.

  “Yeah, we picked up a few dollars,” Hennessey replied.

  Strayhorn nodded. “I heard about your great stagecoach robbery,” he said. “How much did you get?”

  “Enough,” Hennessey replied without being specific.

  Strayhorn chuckled. “You got one hundred fifty-three dollars,” he said. “And you had to give half of that to Boomer.”

  “What difference does it make to you what we got?” Hennessey replied. “It was enough to keep us going until today. So now, where is this twenty-five thousand dollars you say we are going to get?”

  “Like I told you, it’s on the Midnight Flyer,” Strayhorn replied. “Get your horses saddled and meet out front in fifteen minutes. We’ve got a long way to ride.”

  Chapter Nine

  Cuchara, Colorado

  It was growing dark as Matt Jensen stepped out onto the platform of the Cuchara depot. He had bought his ticket and made arrangements for Spirit to be loaded onto the stock car that was part of the train. He was now waiting for the train that would take him to Denver. Matt could hear the echoing puffs of the engine and see the almost luminescent white steam billowing from the drive cylinders.

  “The train for Denver and all parts north!” the station manager shouted through his megaphone, though no such announcement was necessary. Cuchara was a one-track town and everyone knew where every train that passed through was bound.

  Layne McKenzie had been on trains for three days and two nights now, having boarded in Cairo, Illinois. She had but one more night on this train before reaching Denver. It had been an exciting adventure, but as her only sleep had been what she could grab by trying to get comfortable in uncomfortable seats, she was very tired.

  As the train began slowing for another stop, she shifted positions and looked through the window at the little town. A sign attached to the end of the station house read CUCHARA, and she rolled the name over on her tongue. The further west she got, the more melodic and exotic-sounding were the names of the towns.

  One of the men standing on the platform caught her attention. He was tall and blond, and even from the train she could tell that his flashing blue eyes were deep and unexpectedly expressive. He carried some packages onto the train for a woman and two children, and Layne felt a twinge of envy for the woman, who was apparently his wife.

  “Thank you, sir,” the woman said as the man put the packages in the overhead rack for her. “You have been most kind.”

  “Glad I could help, ma’am,” the man said, touching the brim of his hat.

  So, they aren’t married, Layne thought. Again, the thought was followed by, Not that it matters. The terms of her employment were very specific about that. She could not get married while she was teaching school.

  I must really be tired, she thought. Why am I even thinking about such a thing?

  There were two short whistles from the engine, then a series of jerks as all the slack was worked out of the couplings when the train got under way.

  The Denver and Rio Grande Train Number Eighty-three, known as the Midnight Flyer and consisting of an engine, tender, two express cars, and six passengers cars, was on the midnight run, working its way up toward Thunder Pass. Scheduled to arrive in Denver at just after sunrise, it was a marvel of nineteenth-century progress in which a person could be whisked some 150 miles in one night.

  One of the 131 passengers making the trip was Matt Jensen. Matt was sitting alone, halfway down the left-hand side of the second of four passenger cars. There was a wood-burning stove at the rear of the car, but the small bubble of heat it put out did very little to push back the numbing cold that permeated the car.

  As night fell, a porter came through handing out blankets to all the passengers, but Matt gave his to the woman who was traveling with two children, a boy about nine and a girl of six. He then turned the collar up on his wool-lined, sheepskin coat, and looked through the window at the dark mass of coniferous trees that climbed the sides of the mountains nearby.

  Although night had fallen, the illuminated cars were projecting little squares of golden light that slid alongside the track with the train, creating a sparkling effect with the falling precipitation of sleet mixed with snow. Matt saw a wolf dart from some shrub covering, keep pace with the train for about one hundred yards, then dart back into the woods.

  “Mama, how long before we get to Denver?” the nine-year-old asked.

  “We’ll be there by morning,” the woman answered.

  “Will Daddy be there?” the little girl asked.

  “Oh, yes. He’ll be there in a buckboard to pick us up.”

  “I hope he has a lot of buffalo robes to wrap up in,” the boy said. “It’s really cold.”

  “I’m sure he will. You know that Daddy is always prepared,” the woman answered. “Now, why don’t the two of you try to sleep?”

  Listening to the dialogue between mother, son, and daughter caused Matt to think back to his own sister and mother. It had been a long time since he thought about them, not because they were unimportant to him, but because the memories were too unpleasant.

  The gentle rocking of the train, the rhythmic sound of the wheels passing over the track joints, and the warmth of his sheepskin coat enabled Matt to fall asleep.

  It was a fitful sleep, one in which Matt dreamed that he was back in the orphanage under the tutelage of an evil man who called himself Captain Mumford.

  Matt had committed some breach of Mumford’s regulations and for it, he was to be punished.

  “Gag him, Simon,” Mumford said. “We wouldn’t want to wake the others with his screams.”

  Simon stuck a rolled-up sock down Matt’s throat, then tied a cloth around around his mouth to secure the gag.

  “Connor, you may begin,” Mumford said.

  “Yes, Cap’n Mumford,” Connor said, his own voice reflecting his excitement over the task before him.

  At first, Matt wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but it took little more than a second for him to find out. He heard the swish of the whip as Connor swung it toward him.

  The pain of the lash across his back was immediate, but he was surprised that the pain seemed to go deeper than the flesh. He felt it in the pit of his stomach and his groin. He tried to scream, but the gag silenced him.

  Within three more lashes, Matt los
t control of his bladder and began urinating.

  “Hee, hee, hee, he’s a ’peein’ in his pants,” Simon said. “Hell, he ain’t no more’n a baby”.

  Matt could no longer count the number of lashes. They seemed to fall one on top of the other until, eventually, he was no longer able to distinguish individual lashes. The impact of one lash blended into the next so that he was experiencing a constant and excruciating pain. He felt his head beginning to spin; then everything faded away and his head dropped.

  “Hold it, Connor,” Mumford called out.

  Connor let the whip drop by his side and he stood there, breathing hard from the exertion. He, Mumford, and Simon looked at the boy, who now hung in the manacles, his head forward and his eyes closed.

  “Is he dead?” Simon asked. There was a sense of morbid excitement to Simon’s question, as if he hoped Matt was dead.

  Mumford stepped up closer to Matt. The back of Matt’s long underwear was striped and pooled with blood from his shoulders, all the way down to his knees. Mumford put his hand on Matt’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

  “He’s alive,” he said. “Take him back to his bed.”

  Connor nodded, then undid the manacles. Without them to hold him up, Matt collapsed on the floor.

  The train ran over a rough section of track, and the clacking and jerking of the car caused Matt to wake up. It took him a second to gather his thoughts, to realize that he was not back in the orphanage, but was on a train bound for Denver.

  Although he had told Sheriff Craig that he was going to Denver for a piece of apple pie, the truth is, he had no particular reason for going to Denver. But then, he had no particular reason for being anywhere. He had no plans beyond spending a few weeks in the city enjoying the restaurants, hotels, and gaming houses. And why not? He was young, and he had no familial encumbrances or obligations.