Torture of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Julia laughed. “Not exactly where they left off. They were only ten years old then. Now that they are a little older, I expect she’s aware that he’s a boy, and Billy is aware that Tamara is a girl.”

  “Billy is a real fine boy,” Big Ben said. “Does real well in school, and he’s already a good hand around cattle. He’s going to grow up to be a fine young man.”

  Big Ben and Julia exchanged an obvious look, then Ben said, “I think now would be the time to bring it up.”

  “You would be talking about Tamara coming here?” Sally asked.

  “Yes, I am most anxious to ask Tamara if she would like to come live with us,” Julia said. “But I’m not sure how best to do it.”

  “Suppose we ask her tonight, over dinner?” Sally suggested.

  “Yes, I think that would be a good time,” Julia replied.

  * * *

  Several people at the ranch welcomed Tamara back, but nobody was more pleased to see her than young Billy Lewis. Having just turned fifteen, Billy and Tamara were very close to the same age. Billy was tall for a fifteen-year-old, and because he had been active on the ranch, he was well proportioned.

  Billy invited Tamara to go for a ride with him, and he saddled two horses, and was about to help her mount, when she protested.

  “Billy Lewis, I have been riding a horse as long as you have. I need no help in mounting,” she protested.

  “You don’t understand, Tamara. We were kids then, but now I’m a young man and you’re a young lady,” Billy said. “A gentleman always helps a lady.”

  Tamara flashed a beautiful smile. “You’re right,” she said. “Please forgive me, Mr. Lewis, sir, for my outburst. I would love to have your assistance in mounting.”

  They left the paddock at a rapid trot, and fifteen minutes later, they dismounted on the bank of the Trinity River.

  “This is the best place on the whole ranch to catch fish,” Billy said. “You can ’most always come up with a mess o’ fish.”

  “I had almost forgotten what it was like here,” Tamara said, hugging herself. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”

  “Never.” Billy was staring pointedly at Tamara when he said the word.

  Tamara felt herself blushing, but it was a warm and pleasant feeling, not a blush of embarrassment.

  “Why are you wearing that ring?” Billy asked, pointing to the ring on Tamara’s left hand.

  “It was my mother’s ring,” Tamara said, defensively.

  “You should wear it on your other hand,” Billy said. “If people see it on your left hand, they will think you are married.”

  “I’m too young to be married.”

  “Yes, but you don’t look like a little girl anymore,” Billy said. “Wait, maybe you should wear it on your left hand, that way if people think you are already married, nobody will try and marry you before I’m old enough.”

  Tamara laughed. “You are just being silly,” she said.

  Billy reached down to take her left hand in his. “Keep it on this hand, for me,” he said.

  “All right, I will,” she promised.

  * * *

  “Oh, peach cobbler!” Tamara said with enthusiasm when desert was served after dinner that evening.

  “I seem to remember that you liked that,” Julia said.

  “Tell me, Tamara, have you enjoyed your visit here?” Sally asked.

  “Yes, ma’am!” Tamara said. “I’d almost forgotten how much I loved this place, how Papa used to put me in the saddle with him and . . .” She stopped in midsentence as her eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, using a handkerchief supplied by Cal to wipe away the tears.

  “Don’t be sorry, child,” Julia said. “Memories are precious, even the sad ones. And I believe that your papa is in heaven, right now, sharing that same memory with you.”

  “Is he remembering when you and Billy decided to play hooky from school, and wound up hiding out in a poison ivy patch?” Big Ben asked, smiling to lighten the mood.

  “Oh, I hope not,” Tamara said, laughing at the memory.

  “Did you enjoy your visit with Billy?”

  “Oh, yes, very much!” Tamara said, and as she had when she caught Billy looking at her down by the river, she felt that same warm blush of pleasure pass over her.

  “Tamara, would you like to come back here to live?” Julia asked.

  “Yes, and when I’ve grown up and can support myself, I fully intend to come back down here.”

  “Not when you have grown up. She means now, child,” Big Ben said. “Would you like to come down here now? We have plenty of room in this house, Becca’s old room, Dalton’s, and we even have two guest rooms, either of which you could make into your own.”

  “You mean, come down here and live with you?” Tamara asked, the words so hesitantly spoken that they could barely be heard.

  “Yes. We would love to have you live with us,” Julia said. “We know we can never take the place of your parents, but I swear to you, we would love you, and look after you as if you were our own child.”

  “Oh!” Tamara said. She looked over at Sally. “Miz Sally?”

  “Do you want to do it?” Sally asked, the smile on her face showing Tamara that she was agreeable to the suggestion.

  “Yes!” Tamara said. “I think I would rather come back down here more than just about anything in the world. Oh, but, don’t get me wrong, I am ever so grateful to you and Mr. Jensen for taking me in like you did but, yes, I want to do it.”

  “Then I think you should do it.”

  Again Tamara’s eyes brimmed with tears, but this time they were tears of happiness. Getting up from her chair, she went to Sally and hugged her, before going to Julia, and then Big Ben.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough!’

  “So, now that that is all taken care of, when are you going back to Colorado?” Julia asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Sally said. “The women of Big Rock are having a bake sale for the orphanage next week, and I intend to take part.”

  “Miss Sally sells her bear sign and they’re always the first thing to go,” Cal said.

  “Yes, because you keep pilfering them,” Pearlie charged.

  “Oh, I think you manage to keep even with him,” Smoke said, and the others laughed.

  “Colonel Conyers, dinner is ready, sir,” the cook said.

  “Ah, good, good. Well, ladies and gentlemen, what do you say we repair to the dining room?” Big Ben invited.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I’m glad Ben and Julia were willing to take Tamara in. I think she is going to be very happy there,” Smoke said as he, Sally, Pearlie and Cal were on the train on their way back home.

  “Oh they were more than just willing,” Sally said. “It was obvious that they very much wanted to have Tamara come live with them.”

  “Yes,” Smoke agreed.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t get a chance to see your niece while we were there,” Sally said.

  “It’s good enough just to know that she and Tom are happily married, and she is doing well,” Smoke said. “Who would have thought that that big cowboy we met during that cattle drive from Dodge City to Live Oaks was actually a skilled surgeon? What a surprise he turned out to be.”

  “Well, I can’t say that I knew from the beginning that he was a surgeon,” Sally said. “But I knew, almost from the moment we first met him, that he was much more than a cowboy.”

  “How did you know that, Miss Sally?” Cal asked.

  “There was an air about him,” Sally said. “Not of superiority or arrogance, but certainly one of sophistication; the way he talked, the music and poetry he appreciated, the classics he had read. Despite his appearances, I knew he was an educated man.”

  “Makes you wonder why a man like that was workin’ as a cowboy,” Cal said.

  “Don’t you remember?” Sally asked. “He was running away from a personal tragedy.”

  “Oh, yes, the woma
n he was married to died while he was operating on her, and he felt guilty about it,” Cal said.

  “I can understand how the sorrow might have given him a sense of guilt, but in fact he had no reason to feel guilty,” Sally said. “I’m glad he recovered. He is much too good of a man to carry such a burden.”

  Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

  Dr. Tom Whitman, the very person that Sally was talking about was, at that moment, getting a briefing on one of the patients in the hospital.

  “The patient is a forty-three-year-old woman, Mrs. Margaret Allen. You may have heard of her. Her husband, Joe Allen, owns North Atlantic Maritime Shipping, with more ships than the entire navy of some countries,” Dr. Parrish said.

  “How is she presenting?” Dr. Whitman asked. Tom Whitman was six feet three inches tall, and just under two hundred and twenty-five pounds of all muscle. He was an exceptionally powerful man and he looked much more like a dockworker, than the skilled surgeon he was.

  “Her symptoms are excruciating pain, a lack of appetite, and frequent vomiting,” Dr. Parrish said, reading from the admission paper.

  “Have you examined her, Doctor?” Tom asked.

  “I have.”

  “Your diagnosis?”

  “She has a tumor in her stomach. I’m afraid there is nothing we can do about it.”

  “Maybe I can remove the tumor,” Tom suggested.

  “What? No, that is impossible! You can’t do abdominal surgery, it is too dangerous. Why, nobody has ever removed a stomach tumor except during autopsy,” Dr. Parris said.

  “Not true. Dr. Theodor Billroth did so a couple of years ago at the Surgical University Clinic of the Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna,” Tom said.

  “And the patient lived?”

  “She did indeed, and had a rapid recovery. So if it has been done once, it can be done again. And what other choice do we have?”

  “Tom, you are as skilled a surgeon as I have ever met, so if this guy in Vienna could do it, I’ve no doubt but that you can too.”

  “Will you assist?” Tom asked.

  “I would be honored to.”

  When Tom stepped into the room to see Mrs. Allen a few minutes later, her husband, Joe, a tall, dignified-looking man, was sitting at her bedside. Her face reflected the pain she was experiencing.

  “Mr. Allen, Mrs. Allen, I’m Dr. Tom Whitman. I would like to talk to you about a procedure I want to do.”

  “Will it make the pain go away?” Joe Allen asked.

  “It will, if I am successful.”

  “Then try it.”

  “I have to warn you, however, that if I am not successful, the results could be fatal.”

  “You mean I might die,” Mrs. Allen said. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and there was no anxiety in her voice,

  “Yes.”

  “Try it, Doctor, by all means try it,” Mrs. Allen said. “If I die during the operation, I would still be better off than I am now.”

  Half an hour later, Tom and Dr. Parish were in the operating room with Mrs. Allen. She was on the table, unconscious now from the administration of chloroform.

  The operation was being conducted in the amphitheater with other doctors and student doctors observing. The tumor, about the size of an apple, was removed from her stomach, the incisions were sewn back together, and the patient was taken to a special room set aside for recovery.

  “Amazing,” Dr. Parrish said as he and Tom were washing up after the operation. “How were you able to do that, knowing that the slightest slip of the scalpel could have killed her?”

  “It was simple,” Tom said.

  “Simple? Are you crazy? What do you mean it was simple?”

  “Well, you said it yourself, Harry. The slightest slip of the scalpel could have killed her, so I just made certain that the scalpel didn’t slip.”

  Harry Parrish laughed out loud. “I suppose that is as good an explanation of how to perform a difficult surgical procedure as anything I ever heard in medical school. You’re a fine doctor, Tom, and Mass General is lucky to have you.”

  Big Rock, Colorado

  When the train carrying Smoke and the others back home pulled into the station at Big Rock three days later, Kenny Prosser, one of Smoke’s hands, was standing on the depot platform to greet them.

  “It’s really great to see you back!” Kenny said enthusiastically.

  “Wow, Kenny, I didn’t think you would miss me that much,” Pearlie said.

  “Nah, I didn’t miss you at all,” Kenny said. “But it’s time for the bake sale, ’n that means Miss Sally will be makin’ her bear sign. Whenever she does that, why, she always makes enough for the hands to have a few.”

  “As soon as she gets them cooked, I’ll be sure to bring a couple of them out to the bunkhouse so you and the others will have them to share,” Pearlie teased.

  “What? Two? For all of us to share?”

  Sally laughed. “Oh, I think we can do better than that.”

  “Better not let Pearlie take them out there Miss Sally, or it’s more than likely two to share is all they will get,” Cal said.

  “Ha! Like you would do any better,” Pearlie challenged.

  “Listen, I didn’t bring your horses, seein’ as I knew you would have luggage, so I brought a buckboard,” Kenny said. “I hope that’s all right.”

  “Too lazy to saddle four horses, huh?” Pearlie teased.

  “What? No, I . . .”

  “Did exactly the right thing,” Smoke said, easing the young man’s concern.

  Kenny looked around. “Where’s the girl? Where’s Tamara?”

  “She chose to stay with some old friends of hers,” Sally said.

  “Will she be comin’ back up here?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She seems fairly pleased with the arrangement.”

  “Well, if she’s happy with it. But she was a nice girl, and me ’n Lou is for sure goin’ to miss her.”

  “They’re unloadin’ the luggage now,” Pearlie said, glancing at the little depot cart near the baggage car. “Come on, Cal, Kenny, let’s go get it.”

  * * *

  Smoke’s ranch was seven miles west of Big Rock, and the team pulling the buckboard kept up a steady trot so that they reached the ranch in just over half an hour. When they left Eagle Road, they turned under a sign that spanned the driveway, with the name Sugarloaf worked in wrought-iron letters across the arch. Driving up the long drive, they approached a big, two-story house, a large barn, a long bunkhouse, and a few other buildings. Every building was well kept and had a fresh paint job.

  “Oh, it is good to be home,” Sally said.

  “Not as grand as Live Oaks,” Smoke pointed out.

  “Oh, but that is where you are wrong, sir,” Sally said with a contented smile. “I would never want to live anywhere else but Sugarloaf, and that makes it as grand as any ranch, plantation, or estate.”

  Smoke reached over to take Sally’s hand. “You’re right at that, Sally. There is nothing more grand than Sugarloaf.”

  When Kenny pulled the buckboard to a stop in front of the house, Smoke and Sally stepped down, and Smoke, almost without thought, put his arm around her.

  “Seein’ as you ’n Miss Sally are goin’ to be huggin’ ’n all, I’ll take your luggage in,” Pearlie said, grabbing Smoke and Sally’s bags.

  “I’ll help Kenny put away the team and buckboard,” Cal added.

  After the other three left, Sally kissed Smoke.

  “Wow, you really are happy to be back home, aren’t you?” Smoke asked.

  Sally smiled. “Yes, well, being back home is fine, but what I like most is the eighteen thousand dollars we made from the trip.”

  “Only thirteen, after paying for the cars. But it’s good to know that it’s my money you love, and not me. What if I go broke? Will you still love me?” Smoke teased.

  “Always, my love, always,” Sally replied, kissing him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

 
When Smoke went to town the next morning, he encountered Sheriff Monty Carson at Longmont’s Saloon.

  “Smoke, it’s good to see you back, and you got here just in time,” Sheriff Carson said.

  “I got back just in time for what?”

  “I got this telegram this morning,” Sheriff Carson said, showing a little yellow sheet of paper to Smoke. “I think it’s something that you might find very interesting.

  SHERIFF I JUST SAW CUTTER MACMURTRY

  IN FULFORD STOP HE IS WALKING

  AROUND AS BIG AS LIFE STOP

  ANGUS POTTER

  “Fulford is just across the county line, so it’s out of my territory. But you hold a commission from the governor, so the fact that he is across the county line won’t mean anything to you.”

  “What about the sheriff in Fulford?” Smoke asked.

  “Sheriff Burleson is death on drunks in the street, but I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think he wants anything to do with a man like Cutter MacMurtry. If you ask me, that’s exactly why MacMurtry is there.”

  Smoke took another look at the telegram. “Tell me, Monty, how much faith do you put in this telegram?” he asked.

  “Angus Potter was one of the first deputies I had after I was elected sheriff,” Carson said. “He was a good man until he lost the use of one arm in an accident. If he says MacMurtry is there, then I’d be willing to bet the farm on it.”

  “All right,” Smoke said. “I’ll take a trip over to Fulford and check it out. But do me a favor, would you? Send one of your deputies out to tell Sally where I am.”

  “I won’t send a deputy,” Sheriff Carson said. “I will personally go out to your place and tell her myself.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  * * *

  Sally was drawing a bucket of water from the pump on the back porch when she saw Sheriff Carson riding up. At first she smiled at the visit because the sheriff was a good friend.

  But why was he here, while Smoke was in town? She felt a twinge of fear and put her hand to her mouth.