Torture Town

by William W. Johnstone

  Sylvia,

  I know that you didn’t want to leave home ten years ago when I sent you away after your mother died. I thought I was doing the right thing by you then, and I hope that is the case. Your brother and I have missed you terribly, and now that you are a grown woman, I think it is time for you to come back home.

  Of course, the very fact that you are grown now means that I can only ask you to come back. I can’t order you. The decision is yours, and while I have no right to hope that you will return, please know that, with all my heart, I want you to do so.

  Your loving father

  Sylvia had thought about writing her father and telling him that she had no intention of returning. After all these years, she was still upset with him for insisting that she leave the only home she had ever known.

  But now, she knew another home. Her aunt and uncle had made a welcome and loving home for her. She had met friends, and had a good job teaching. What tilted her decision, though, was something that had happened just before school was out. H. M. Hood, the man that she was in love with, the man she had thought she was going to marry, had suddenly and unexpectedly married another woman.

  Sylvia was aware of the circumstances surrounding the marriage of her mother and father, and she could not help but believe that this was karma coming to claim, if not her father, then at least her father’s daughter. She bore the pain and humiliation of what Hood had done, and decided that she would respond to her father’s request. She would go to New Mexico.

  Sylvia hired a surrey to move her and her luggage from the apartment she had lived in for the last two years. The surrey rolled past the Abraham Lincoln home at Eighth and Jackson, recently deeded to the state of Illinois by Robert Lincoln, and already a popular destination for visitors. Sylvia had visited the home and, though she was looking forward to returning to New Mexico, she knew there was much about Springfield that she would miss.

  Rio Grande River, New Mexico

  That night, on the bank of the Rio Grande, several miles south of Espanola, a man calling himself Lucien Bodine walked over to the flickering campfire and, using his hat as a heat pad, picked up the blue-steel coffeepot and poured a black stream into his tin cup. Setting the pot back down, he blew on the coffee for a moment, then sucked a swallow in between extended lips, before turning to the others. There were five men gathered around him.

  “All right now, here’s our operation,” Bodine began. “The BR and the Tumblin’ P have been feudin’ with one another for over twenty years now. Thirty Four Corners is split right down the middle, with half the town supportin’ the BR Ranch, and half the town supportin’ the Tumblin’ P. And because of that, it’s been pretty much kept under control, but make no mistake, they hate each other. And it won’t take too much to get ’em into an actual shootin’ war. And that’s what we want.”

  “We want a shootin’ war between the two ranches?” a man named Meeker asked.

  “Yes. Once a shootin’ war starts, they’re goin’ to be so concerned with each other that they won’t be payin’ any attention to us. That’ll leave us free to take advantage of the situation. All we have to do is get ’em started. Then, when they’re busy killin’ off one another, we’ll start stealin’ ’em blind.”

  “How do we get ’em started?” one of the men asked.

  The questioner was Sam Strawn. Strawn had killed at least twelve men in face-to-face gunfights, and though he had managed in every case to convince the law that it was a matter of self-defense, he had, in more than one case, bullied his victims into drawing on him.

  “I’ll be sending two men into town tomorrow to get things stirred up.”

  “Which ones of us are you going to send?” a man named Dooley asked.

  “I’m not sending any of you. I’ve got two other men for that. And, once they take care of their business, we’ll be ready to put the rest of the plan into operation. Sam, you’ll take Meeker and Wallace with you, and go to work for Poindexter at the Tumbling P. I’ll take Massey and Dooley with me to join up with Ross at the BR Ranch.”

  “What about the two men you were just talkin’ about? I mean the two that’s goin’ to stir things up?” Strawn asked. “Are you goin’ to divide them up? Or will they both go to the same ranch?”

  “No, they won’t go to either ranch. For the time being I’m goin’ to keep them separated from the rest of us,” Bodine explained. “We are the only ones who will actually join up with the two ranches.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dooley asked. “Didn’t you just say that you plan to start a shootin’ war between the BR and the Tumblin’ P?”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I plan.”

  “But, we’re goin’ to split up with half of us goin’ to the BR and half goin’ to the Tumblin’ P?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well now, that don’t make no sense at all, Bodine. If we are goin’ to be on opposite sides when the shootin’ starts, why, we’ll be fightin’ agin’ each other.”

  Bodine ran his hand back over the top of his head and sighed. “Will somebody explain this to Dooley? I thought I had already explained it, but evidently I didn’t get through to him.”

  “It’s like this,” Strawn started, but Bodine stopped him.

  “No, Sam, I know you understand, ’cause you ’n’ me have talked about this. I want one of the others to explain it to him. If Dooley don’t understand what we’re a-doin’, maybe someone else don’t neither.”

  “I’ll explain it,” Wallace said. “It’s like this, Dooley. We ain’t actually goin’ to be a-fightin’ agin’ each other. Like Bodine says, the whole plan is to keep the two ranches feudin’ agin’ each other. And, one way we’ll be doin’ that is by stealin’ cattle. Strawn, and me ’n’ Meeker ’n’ Bodine will be stealin’ cattle from the Tumbling P. Massey will be stealin’ cattle from the BR.

  “Both ranchers will think it’s the other rancher that’s stealin’ from ’em. That’ll keep the feud goin’, and we’ll be buildin’ up a pretty good size herd for ourselves.”

  “We can more’n likely gather us up a herd of a thousand head or more before anyone catches on to what we’re doin’,” Bodine said, finishing the explanation. “And by that time, we’ll be well out of here.”

  “How much money would that be?” Meeker asked.

  “Well, cattle is bringin’ twenty-five dollars a head, right now. So that would be twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Damn!” Meeker said. “That’s a lot of money!”

  “Yes, it is, and all we got to do is keep this here feud a-goin’,” Bodine said.

  Somewhere in Kansas

  The west-bound Southern Pacific train, on which Sylvia Poindexter was a passenger, made a midnight stop for water. Sylvia was in the top berth of the Pullman car, and only vaguely aware that the stop had been made. She was too comfortable and too tired from all the packing and preparation for her trip out west to pay too much attention to it. Tired as she was, though, she had been unable to sleep.

  Rolling over in bed, she pulled the covers up and listened to the bumping sounds from outside as the fireman lowered the spout from the track-side water tower and began squirting water down into the tank. Sylvia thought of him standing out there in the middle of the night. By contrast it made her own condition, snuggled down in her berth, seem all the more comfortable, but not even that helped sleep come.

  She thought of the last night before she’d left Springfield. Her erstwhile fiancé, H. M. Hood, had come to call on her.

  “It isn’t necessary for you to run away,” Hood had told her. “There is no need for that. Nothing has to change between us.”

  “Nothing has to change? What are you talking about? Everything has changed! You are married!” Sylvia said.

  “Yes, to the daughter of the head of the firm,” Hood replied. “Don’t you see? It was a business decision. This way, I will soon become a partner. Love had nothing to do with it. You are the one I love, and nothing has changed.”

  “Yo
u expect me to be what? Your mistress?”

  “Mistress is such a harsh word,” Hood said. “Couldn’t we have some sort of loving arrangement, without using the term mistress?”

  “No, H.M.,” Sylvia said, resolutely. “No, we cannot.”

  The very idea that Hood had come to her with such a proposal still irritated her to no end. But, there was a positive side to it. She was so incensed by his thoughtless and selfish offer, that she no longer felt a sense of loss over his departure. On the contrary, she felt an enormous sense of relief, and knew now, more than ever, that coming to New Mexico was a good thing.

  “Thank you, Papa, for sending for me,” she murmured, and, as the train got under way again, she finally drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  It was late afternoon of the next day when Matt Jensen approached the little town. From this perspective, and at this distance, the settlement looked little more inviting than any other group of the brown hummocks and hills common to this country. Matt stopped on a ridge and looked down at the town as he removed his canteen from the saddle pommel. He took a swallow, recorked the canteen, then put it back.

  “Well now, Spirit, I do believe that this is a town we haven’t seen before,” Matt said. “What do you say we go have a look?”

  Matt often talked to his horse, because on his long and lonely rides he sometimes needed to hear a human voice, even if it was his own. And, he reasoned, talking to his horse was better than talking to himself.

  Slapping his legs against Spirit’s sides, he headed the animal down the long slope of the ridge, wondering what town this was.

  A small sign just on the edge of town answered the question for him.

  SANTA ANA

  Population 316

  Come grow with us.

  The weathered board and faded letters of the sign indicated that it had been there for some time, erected when there had still been some hope for the town’s future. Matt doubted that there were a hundred and sixteen residents in the town today, and, despite the optimistic tone of the sign, he doubted if the town was still growing.

  There were no more than three or four buildings of wooden construction; all the others were sod buildings, rising from a ground of the same color. The buildings straggled along for not much more than one hundred yards. Then, just as abruptly as the town started, it quit, and the prairie began again.

  Matt knew about such towns—he had been in hundreds of them over the last several years. He knew that in the spring the street would be a muddy mire, worked by the horses’ hooves and mixed with their droppings to become a stinking, sucking pool of ooze. In the winter it would be frozen solid, while in the summer it would bake as hard as rock.

  It was summer now, and the sun was yellow and hot.

  The buildings were weathered and the painted signs on the front of the edifices were worn and hard to read. A wagon was backed up to the general store and a couple of men were listlessly unloading it. They looked over at Matt, curious as to who he was and what brought him to town, though neither of them was ambitious enough to speak to him.

  Matt dismounted in front of a saloon that, according to the sign in front, called itself simply: SALOON. He stepped up onto the boardwalk in front of the establishment, where he made use of a brush shoe-scraper that had been nailed to the boardwalk just for that purpose. He stood for a moment outside the batwing doors, looking into the shadowed interior of the saloon.

  Four or five rough-looking and unkempt men were standing at the bar when Matt went in. There was not a breath of air inside, and the men at the bar were sweating in their drinks and wiping their faces with bandanas.

  Matt was not surprised to see that the bar was made of unpainted, rip-sawed lumber. Its only concession to decorum was to place towels in rings spaced about five feet apart on the customer side of the bar. But the towels looked as if they had not been changed in months, if ever, so their very filth negated the effect of having them there.

  The bartender was washing glasses. Seeing Matt step up to the bar, he set down cloth and glass, and moved toward him.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Whiskey,” Matt replied.

  Reaching behind him, the bartender took down a bottle, pulled the cork, and poured the amber liquid into one of the glasses he had just washed.

  “You’re new in town,” the bartender said. It wasn’t a question; it was a declaration.

  “I’m not in town,” Matt said. “I’m just passing through. Thought I’d have a couple of drinks, eat some food that isn’t trail-cooked, and maybe get a room for the night before moving on.”

  “What brings you to this neck of the woods?” the barkeep asked as he poured the whiskey.

  Matt hesitated for a moment. Should he ask outright if Rufus Draco had come through here?

  He decided against it. He had learned, long ago, that it was often easier to acquire information indirectly than by outright questioning.

  “Nothing in particular,” Matt said. “I’m just wandering around.”

  Matt paid for his drink, then lifted it to his lips. Taking a swallow, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Is there a place to eat in this town?”

  “Mollie’s is just down the street. Nothin’ fancy, but the food is good,” the bartender said.

  “Thanks, I’ll give it a try,” Matt said. He tossed his whiskey down, then set the glass back on the bar.

  “Another whiskey?” the bartender asked.

  “No, I think I’ll have a beer this time,” Matt said.

  The bartender smiled. “Whiskey, with a beer chaser,” he said. “Sounds like Matt Jensen.”

  “What?” Matt asked, surprised to hear his name spoken here, in this place where he had never been before.

  The bartender chuckled. “I know, I know, I got no business reading Ned Buntline’s accounts of Smoke and Matt Jensen. My friends tell me such stories are for kids. Maybe I’m just a kid at heart.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Matt asked with a smile, knowing now that the bartender hadn’t actually recognized him.

  Matt listened in as best he could to the other conversations going on in the saloon, but nobody seemed to be talking about anything that might be helpful to him. Because of that, Matt’s only chance of gathering any information here would be to just come right out and ask.

  “Bartender, I’m trying to catch up with someone, and I’ve been following his trail south. I don’t know if he came through here or not, but I’m thinking that he might have.”

  “Headin’ south, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’d he start from?”

  “The last place that I saw him was the Brothers of Mercy Monastery up in Taos County.”

  “Yes, I know that place, an old Spanish monastery, ain’t it? Been around for a couple hundred years or more. But that’s a long way up from here.”

  “I’m pretty sure he was also in the town of Lorenzo. I didn’t see him there, but some folks I spoke to there did.”

  “Well, if he was comin’ south from there, like as not he did come through here, ’cause there ain’t a hell of a lot of other places he can go. What’s the fella’s name?”

  “Draco. Rufus Draco.”

  The bartender scratched his head. “Ain’t a name I recollect hearin’. Just a minute, let me yell at Belle, she keeps up on all the strangers that come through. Belle!” he yelled. “Belle, come out here for a minute, will you?”

  A moment later, a woman came through a door at the back of the room. She had obviously been a very pretty woman at one time, but now she was heavily painted in an attempt to cover the dissipation of her profession. There was very little humor or life left to her eyes, but perceiving Matt as a potential customer, and realizing that he was a large step up from the clientele she normally serviced, she allowed a broad smile to play across her face.

  “Well now, cowboy, what can I do for you?” she asked.

  “He don’t want
to go to your room, Belle, all he wants is . . . ,” the bartender started to say, but Matt interrupted him.

  “Who said I don’t want to go to her room? Of course I want to go to her room. Unless you are too busy,” he added, looking at her with a friendly smile.

  “Cowboy, even if I did have someone, I would send them away,” she said. She curled her finger. “Come with me.”

  When they reached the woman’s room, she started to get undressed.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Matt said.

  “What? What do you mean it won’t be necessary?”

  “I mean we won’t be . . . uh . . .” Matt didn’t finish his comment, but he made a motion toward the bed with his hand.

  “Then what did we come into my room for?”

  “How much do you get for a visit?” Matt asked.

  “Two dollars. Five dollars for all night.”

  Matt took out a bill and handed it to her. “Here is five dollars.”

  “Five dollars? If we aren’t going to lay together, what do you want me to do for five dollars?”

  “Talk.”

  “Talk? Oh, I get it. You want to know what would make a woman become a whore, is that it?”

  Matt didn’t respond to Belle’s question. He was silent for a long moment as he thought about Tamara, the girl he had spoken about to Julie. He recalled the girl he had known when he was a young orphan in the Home for Wayward Boys and Girls, back in Soda Creek, Colorado. The girl’s name was Tamara, and, like him, she had been an orphan resident of the home. When Matt had decided that he could take no more mistreatment from Emanuel Mumford, the director of the home, he’d planned his escape, and Tamara had helped him.

  Several years later, Matt had encountered Tamara again, only this time she had been working as a prostitute. She had come to nurse him when he had been badly wounded in a knife fight with two men who had attacked him.

  “Tamara!” he gasped in surprise. “What are you doing here?”