Torture Town

by William W. Johnstone

  “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” Rex said.

  “I knew you would recognize it!”

  “Since we have so much in common, don’t you think we should know other’s names?”

  “Why?”

  “Suppose I wanted to call on you again?”

  “If it is meant to be, it will be,” Sylvia said.

  “But, should we tempt fate so?”

  “Yes, for only by tempting fate, shall our true destiny be determined,” Sylvia replied.

  Rex chuckled quietly. “You have quite a way with words. But I particularly like what you just said, when you referred to it as our destiny.”

  In the ballroom behind them, they heard the music stop.

  “I had better get back inside,” she said.

  “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  Rex offered her arm, and Sylvia took it. Just as they stepped inside, though, they were met by Nate Poindexter. Without so much as a word, Nate threw a punch that landed on Rex’s chin. The punch was totally unexpected, and Rex went down like a sack of potatoes.

  “Nate!” Sylvia gasped in anger and fear. “Are you insane? What are you doing?”

  “Get back inside, now!” Nate ordered.

  “What? What has gotten into you?”

  “Sylvia, come with me,” Linda said, taking Sylvia’s arm.

  “What is this? What is going on?”

  “Please, come with me,” Linda pleaded. “I’ll explain everything.”

  “Why did Nate . . . good Lord! Nate is holding a gun!”

  “Sylvia, don’t you know who that was that you were with?”

  “Yes, he is the man that I barged in on, while he was taking his bath. But, Linda, nothing happened! Absolutely nothing! Nate had no cause to attack him like that.”

  “Seeing him in the bath has nothing to do with it. Sylvia, that is Rex Ross.”

  “Ross?” Sylvie replied, putting her fingers to her lips, the same lips that could still feel his kiss. “That was Rex Ross?”

  “Yes. Now do you see why your brother reacted as he did? He was just trying to protect you.”

  When Rex regained his feet, he was about to go after Nate in retaliation for the attack, but he stopped short when he saw that Nate was pointing a pistol at him.

  “What were you two doing out there?” Nate asked.

  “What do you mean, what were we doing? What the hell business is that of yours?” Rex asked angrily.

  “You had better never let me catch you with her again. Leave her alone.”

  Rex smiled, a mocking smile.

  “Oh, I get it now. Well, Nate, if you can’t hang on to your girlfriend, that’s not my problem.”

  “She isn’t my girlfriend, you pretentious son of a bitch! She is my sister!”

  “Your sister?”

  “Sylvia is my sister.”

  Rex, shocked by the news, took a couple of steps back and stared at Nate. “That was Sylvia?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  “Yes. And I’m telling you now, stay away from her,” Nate ordered.

  “Don’t worry, I will. I don’t want anything to do with anyone who is named Poindexter.”

  Wedge Hill Ranch

  Although the BR and the Tumbling P were the two biggest ranches in the county, theirs weren’t the only ranches. There were at least half-a-dozen others, including Wedge Hill, a small ranch owned by Kyle Stallings. At one time, Kyle Stallings had ridden for Ben Ross, but in doing some research he’d discovered that the land claims filed by both Ross and Poindexter had left a fifteen-thousand-acre pie-slice-shaped wedge at the eastern end of the two large ranches, so he’d filed on it. Not only did his ranch have some of the best grassland in the county, the “arc” of the pie was on the Rio Puerco, providing Stallings with a year-round source of water.

  Although neither Ben Ross nor Morgan Poindexter was happy with the arrangement, their animosity toward each other was so great that, for the most part, they tended to leave Stallings alone. There were some who advised Stallings to ally himself with either Ross or Poindexter so that he would have their protection. But it was Stallings’s belief that his best option would be, to the extent possible, to keep himself completely free of the feud, and that’s what he did.

  On the Stallings ranch, Kyle sat on a rock outcropping and leaned back against a boulder. His foreman had just brought him a skillet of beans and bacon. There were a couple of biscuits and an onion slice on the side.

  “Uhmm, biscuits,” Stallings said.

  “They can’t no one make biscuits like Andy,” one of the drovers, said. “Boss, I tell you, Andy is gonna make some hard-drivin’ woman a awful good husband,” he teased.

  Stallings and the others laughed, and Andy, who was emptying the last dregs of a cup of coffee, threw the rest toward the man who was teasing him. It was all in good fun though, with little chance of an actual fight erupting. There were four men sitting around the fire and two more out riding night-herd. Those six represented Stallings’s entire outfit. The fire had just about burned down and was little more than glowing embers.

  “Boss, when it comes time for you to bed down, well, I throw’d your roll down over here,” Joe Canby said. Nearly sixty, Canby was by far the oldest of the drovers and was sort of the father figure to all of them. “It’s on high ground ’n’ ’bout as level as anyplace I could find around here.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Canby,” Stallings said as he raked his biscuit through the last of the bean juice. He dunked his kit in a bucket of water, cleaned it off with some sand, then folded it and put it away.

  Stallings’s riders had all ridden for other spreads before they came to work for him. He wasn’t able to pay them the same wages as the other ranchers, but he offered them something more. He offered them a share in the herd. He would keep the land for his own, but he promised his cowboys that they would share in ownership of the herd. That arrangement had created binding loyalties and strengthened friendships. Stallings’s ranch might be the smallest in the county, he reasoned, but everyone who worked there believed it was, by far, the best place to be.

  When the men who worked for Stallings encountered the hands from the other ranches in town, they sometimes teased them for being cowboys, while they, by virtue of their joint ownership of the herd, were cattlemen. It made for some lively discussions in the saloons in town.

  “Boss, you know Ben Ross. Do you really think he hired someone to kill the Patterson boy?” Andy asked. Andy Warren was a former soldier who had been with General Crook in the chase for Geronimo.

  “No, I don’t believe Ben was any more behind that than Morgan Poindexter was behind Seth Miller gettin’ killed,” Kyle said.

  “Well, if they ain’t doin’ it, who is a-doin’ it?”

  Stallings shook his head. “I don’t have an idea in hell who it is that’s a-doin’ all this,” Kyle replied. “But I just can’t believe that either one of ’em would do anything like that. I’ve known both of ’em for a long time. Sure, Ben ’n’ Morgan has got ’em a feud going, but it just isn’t like either one of them to do something like what was done to the Patterson boy.”

  “Well, you know what they’re sayin’, don’t you? They’re sayin’ that the Patterson boy was kilt for revenge for Seth Miller gettin’ kilt,” Andy said.

  “I still don’t believe Ross had anything to do with it.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m tellin’ you the truth, boss, it’s gettin’ harder and harder to go into town with what’s goin’ on and all. You don’t never know when bullets is goin’ to start flyin’.”

  “The whole town is all divided up, half for Ross and half for Poindexter,” another said.

  “Hell, the town has been divided up for over twenty years,” Kyle said.

  “That’s true, but always before the dividing up has been a show of support more ’n anythin’ else. There never was no real shootin’ before, and I’ve got a mind that what’s been happenin’ here lately is just the beginnin’,” Canby said. “And it ain’t ju
st the town that’s divided. Hell, all of Valencia country this side of the Rio Grande is divided.”

  “Except for us,” one of the drovers said. “We ain’t took no sides.”

  “You think we ought to take sides, do you, Marty?” Stallings asked.

  “Seems like we ought to, else we’ll wind up havin’ ever’one against us,” Marty replied.

  “Whose side do you think we should take?”

  “Well, I . . . I don’t rightly know. I rode some for Ross for a while, but Tommy rode for Poindexter. And I reckon Tommy is about my best friend, and I sure wouldn’t want to wind up on the other side from him.”

  Tommy was Tommy Murchison, who was, at the moment, one of the two riders now out with the herd.

  “You just put your finger on it, Marty,” Stallings said. “Which side do we take? It’s not an easy decision to make, is it? Especially when we don’t have a stake in this fight.”

  “What is it they are a-fightin’ about, anyhow?” Andy asked. “Does anyone even know?”

  “I heard oncet that they was fightin’ over a woman,” Marty said. “It’s said that they give the woman a choice between ’em, and she chose Ross.”

  “That ain’t it at all,” Canby said.

  “Then what happened?”

  Canby laughed. “Ross was goin’ to marry him one of those mail-order brides. Poindexter was supposed to act as if he was the bride’s papa, goin’ to give her away. Only thing is, he didn’t give her away. He run off with her . . . right while Ross was standin’ up at the altar, waitin’ for ’em to come walkin’ down the aisle.”

  “I’ve always heard that as well,” Stallings said. “But I wasn’t sure if it was true or not.”

  “It’s true all right,” Canby said.

  “How do you know it’s true?” Andy asked.

  “I know it’s true ’cause I was right there when it happened. I was sittin’ in the church along with near ’bout the rest of the town, waitin’ on the weddin’ to happen.”

  “I’ll be damn,” Andy said. “No wonder Ross ’n’ Poindexter are fightin’.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Thirty Four Corners

  “Who did you say kilt Gillespie?” Shardeen asked. Shardeen and Cates were in the Hog Waller Saloon, talking to Dagan, who had made a special trip over to Thirty Four Corners from Risco, just to give Tully Cates the news that his friend had been killed.

  “A man by the name of Matt Jensen,” Dagan said. “Have you ever heard of him?”

  “Yeah,” Shardeen said. “I’ve heard of him.”

  “So that’s who it was that was shootin’ at us,” Cates said.

  “Wait a minute! You mean you was with Gillespie when he was kilt?” Dagan asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” Dagan said. “I knew it had to have somethin’ to do with whatever it is Gillespie was workin’ on. I want in on it.”

  “You want in on what?”

  “I want in on whatever it was that Gillespie was doin’. He said there was goin’ to be a lot of money in it.”

  “Are you sure you want to take Gillespie’s place? It got him killed, you know,” Cates said.

  “Are you still a part of it?” Dagan asked.

  “A part of what?”

  “I don’t know a part of what,” Dagan replied in an exasperated voice. “But if it’s somethin’ that could get you kilt, and it did get Gillespie kilt, but you’re still a-doin’ it, then it must be worth a lot of money.”

  “There’s no money yet, but yeah, we stand to make a lot of money,” Cates said.

  “Then, count me in.”

  “We’ll have to talk to Bodine about it,” Cates said.

  Two days later, Matt Jensen, now five hundred dollars richer, rode into Thirty Four Corners. It was no different from any of the hundreds of other Western settlements Matt Jensen had come through in his long quest for Rufus Draco. Thirty Four Corners was fly-blown, with its main street lined on both sides by unpainted, rip-sawed, false-fronted buildings. As he passed by one of the buildings, a couple of half-naked women, their breasts spilling over the top of their chemises, called down to him from a balcony.

  “Hey, darlin’, which side of the street will you be goin’ to?” one of them called down to him.

  “Which side of the street? Does it matter?”

  “You’re new to town, ain’t you?” the other asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well here’s the thing, honey. In this town you choose a side of the street, and once you choose, that’s the side you stay on.”

  “Choose this side, then come on up and keep us company. We’ll give you a good welcome,” the other woman said.

  “You mean both of you will give me a good welcome?”

  “Honey, if you can handle both of us, we’ll do it for free,” one of the women said, laughing.

  Matt laughed with her, then rode on down to the far end of the street, where it ended on a cross street that made a T with this one. There, he saw a livery stable. He dismounted as someone came out to greet him. He was about forty, Matt guessed, and showed the signs of a life of hard work, weathered skin and calloused hands, but his eyes were bright and alert.

  “The name is Gregory, Wes Gregory,” the man greeted. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to put my horse up for a while.”

  “Yes, sir, that’ll be a quarter a day,” Gregory said. “Which side?”

  “Which side what?”

  “We’ve got stalls in the north and stalls on the south. Which side do you want your horse on?”

  “Hell, Mr. Gregory, I don’t care which side. Why would you ask me a question like that? All I want is for him to have a place to stay, and to be fed and watered. Does it matter which side he is on for that?”

  “No, sir, we take very good care of all the horses here, no matter which side they are on. I don’t reckon you’ve chose up your side yet, have you?” Gregory asked.

  “Evidently not,” Matt replied, and though he found this reference to sides curious, remembering that even the whores had spoken of choosing a side, his biggest interest at the moment was in getting a bath, then something to drink, and a meal, in that order. Because of that, he didn’t pursue the issue any further, though he knew that the liveryman wanted to carry on the conversation.

  “I’ll put him on the south side, if you have no objections.”

  “Fine.”

  “How long will he be with us?”

  “I don’t know yet. Here’s ten dollars—that should give us forty days, if my math is correct.”

  “Your math is absolutely correct,” the hostler said, taking the money with a broad smile. “I’ll take very good care of your horse for you.”

  “Oh, I know you will,” Matt replied. “Because you don’t want to see what would happen if you didn’t.”

  Gregory laughed. “I like a man who is concerned about his horse. What’s the horse’s name?”

  “Spirit.”

  “Come along, Spirit. I just know we are going to be good friends.”

  Leaving Spirit at the livery, Matt started back up the street toward the Homestead Hotel. He chose the Homestead for no other reason than that it was the closest to the livery. By coincidence, the Homestead was located on the north side of the street, which was the same side as the two women who had greeted him earlier.

  He stepped into the lobby, looked around for a second, and, seeing that it was empty, moved over to the front desk.

  “I need a room,” Matt said as he signed the registry.

  An hour later, with the trail dirt and the stink washed away, Matt stepped out onto the boardwalk in front of the hotel. Looking back toward where he had seen the women earlier, he saw that only one was still standing out there.

  “Oh my, honey, you clean up just real pretty!” the woman called out to him.

  Matt smiled, and touched the brim of his hat, then started in the opposite direction. After walking half a block, he came to the Circle
Thirty Four Saloon. There was a drunk passed out on the steps in front of the place, and Matt had to step over him in order to go inside. Smoke-filled rays of outside light spilled in through the windows. The place smelled of cheap whiskey, stale beer, and strong tobacco. There was a long bar on the left, dirty towels hanging on hooks about every five feet along its front. A large mirror was behind the bar, but what images Matt could see were distorted by imperfections in the glass.

  Over against the back wall, near the foot of the stairs, a cigar-scarred, beer-stained upright piano was being played by a bald-headed musician. Out on the floor of the saloon, nearly all the tables were filled. A few bar gals were flitting about, pushing drinks and promising more than they really intended to deliver. There was a card game in progress, but most of the patrons were just drinking and talking.

  “You can’t get much more evil than to wrap barbed wire around somebody that ain’t much more’n a boy,” Matt heard someone say. “The BR spread must have them some pretty low-down sons of bitches workin’ for ’em, for someone to do somethin’ like that.”

  “More ’n likely, they was just gettin’ revenge,” another said.

  “Revenge for what?”

  “Don’t forget, Seth Miller was a cowboy ridin’ for the BR, and he got hisself shot, and he wasn’t doin’ nothin’ no more ’n standin’ at the bar drinkin’ a beer.”

  “He was shot accidental,” the first speaker said.

  “How do you know it was accidental?”

  “The bullet come in from outside, didn’t it? It had to be accidental.”

  “They’s a lot of folks don’t believe that. You might remember that just before it happened, they was two cowboys that was bedevilin’ Seth and Lou.”

  “They wasn’t cowboys.”

  “No, but they was from the Tumbling P.”

  “Did you know that one of them two fellers that was arguin’ with Seth and Lou has done got hisself shot?” one of the other men asked.

  “Got himself shot? Where?”