Torture Town

by William W. Johnstone

  “I am an absolute idiot for doing this,” he told himself. “So, why am I?”

  He didn’t have to answer the question. He knew why he was doing it. He was doing it because he wanted to see Sylvia again. Would she see him, or would she refuse? And if she refused, would that be the end of it? Or would she tell her father and her brother that he was there?

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this!” he said.

  But he didn’t turn around.

  In her upstairs bedroom, Sylvia Poindexter sat in the dark, looking out toward the full moon. What was it about her and men? First there had been H. M. Hood, who had not only broken their engagement, but had had the audacity to ask her to be his mistress.

  And now, after having come to New Mexico, she’d met a man who could easily make her forget Hood, only to find out that he is the son of her father’s bitterest enemy. Sylvia moved to the window and lifted it, enjoying the feel of a cooling night breeze.

  “Why did he have to be a Ross?” she wondered, speaking aloud, though so quietly that no one could hear her.

  From the bunkhouse she heard someone playing a guitar, the chords a steady beat, the single-string melody working its way through the piece like a thread of gold in a rich tapestry. She wondered how a cowboy could play so beautifully, and wondered why he wasn’t a musician to share his talent with others.

  “Sylvia?”

  The name was so softly spoken that at first, she wasn’t sure she even heard it.

  “Sylvia?”

  Now she knew that she had heard her name. Putting her hands on the windowsill, she leaned out into the night.

  “Who calls?”

  “I am here, by the hackberry tree.”

  Looking in the direction of the tree, she saw Rex Ross. At first her heart leaped in excitement, and she smiled broadly at the thought that he was here. Then she felt fear for him.

  “What are you doing here? Are you insane? Someone is going to see you!”

  “Not if you let me into your room,” Rex said.

  “No, impossible! How would you get into my room, anyway?”

  “I’ll climb in through your window,” Rex said.

  “I . . . all right, but hurry!”

  Earlier that day Matt had made arrangements to attend the showing at the Birdcage Theater. Like the livery stable, the church, and the doctor’s office, the Birdcage Theater was an establishment that served both sides of the town. But, like the livery, and the church, it was laid out in two halves, north and south.

  The theater was often the scene of gunplay, though so far the gunplay had been the result of drunkenness and overexuberance. There had been no shots exchanged between the BR and the Tumbling P riders, and no one had been killed. However, the curtains and screens around the stage had more than one hundred bullet holes, and a particular target was the huge seminude portrait of a belly dancer, where some of the better marksmen had strategically placed holes in three obvious locations.

  “Why do you let them bring guns into the theater?” Matt asked Marshal Hunter.

  “I’ve thought about not letting them, but so far nobody has been killed. And to be honest with you, Matt, I’m not sure I could enforce it.”

  “Do you mind if I try?”

  “No, no, be my guest,” Marshal Hunter said. “I would love to see guns banned from the theater.”

  That evening Matt put a sign at the door informing all patrons to check their firearms before entering the theater. And having done so, he was now leaning against a post at the rear of the theater, looking out over the boisterous crowd. He smiled and tipped his hat to one of the girls he recognized from Diamond Dina’s Pleasure Palace. She was hanging onto the arm of a visiting drummer.

  Jack Martin came up to talk to him. “Deputy, I just thought you might like to know that there are some men on the south side, passing a bottle around and taunting the people on the north side.”

  “Are they heeled?” Matt asked.

  “I think they are,” Martin said. “None of them are wearing holsters, but I do believe a couple of them have pistols stuck down in their waistbands.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They are in the very back row, nearest the aisle,” Martin said.

  “All right, I’ll just mosey over there and stand near them,” Matt suggested.

  At that moment the band played a fanfare and, amidst shouts, hoots, and whistles, the theater owner walked out onto the stage. He stood in front of the closed curtains and held his hands up, asking for quiet.

  “Ladies and gents,” he called.

  “There ain’t no ladies present!” someone from the audience yelled, and his shout was greeted with guffaws of laughter.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, what do you call me, you slack-jawed, weasel-faced son of a bitch?” Sunset Lil shouted back.

  There was more laughter, but the theater owner finally managed to get them quiet again.

  “Honey, don’t you go puttin’ on like you’re a lady. Don’t forget, you used to work for me,” Diamond Dina said, and there was more laughter.

  “Ladies and gents,” he repeated. “Here, lovers of the theater from both sides of any issue may come together in peace to enjoy quality entertainment. Welcome to the Birdcage Theater. Tonight I am pleased to say that we have an especially thrilling show for you.”

  “It’s the same show tonight that it was last night, ain’t it?” someone shouted, and again there was laughter.

  “To be sure,” the interlocutor said, smiling, without missing a beat. “And you enjoyed it last night, so shall you tonight. We begin our show with six of the loveliest girls to be found anywhere west of the Mississippi. I give you, the Mystic Beauties!”

  Amidst a great deal of whistling and stamping of feet, six beautiful and scantily clad young women began the show. After the girls performed, there was a comedy act between a mustachioed man and a beautiful, innocent young girl.

  MUSTACHIOED MAN: My dear, did you hear about the dog who has no nose?

  YOUNG GIRL: My goodness, how does he smell?

  MUSTACHIOED MAN: Awful.

  A cymbal clash followed the joke, and the audience howled in laughter.

  There were a few other jokes of that ilk, then a man billed as the “World’s Greatest Magician” made his appearance.

  “To prove that everything I do is authentic, and not merely the trick of a charlatan, I shall need the assistance of some brave young lady from the audience. You, young lady, would you come up here?”

  He pointed to a woman who was sitting in the front row.

  “Me?” she said, as she stood. “But, I know nothing of show business.”

  “All the better, my dear.”

  When the woman, stepped up onto the stage, she was wearing stage makeup, and looked very much like one of the Mystic Beauties.

  “And now, friends, I shall perform an illusion with the help of this lovely volunteer, whom I have never seen before. Have we ever met, Annie?”

  “No, Paul, we have never before met,” Annie replied.

  “Hey! How do you know her name then?” someone shouted from the audience, but most recognized it for the humor that was intended.

  “I have here a dagger,” Paul said, holding up a knife. “This lovely young volunteer, whom I have never seen before, is going to thrust this dagger deep into my heart. Are you ready, my dear?”

  “Why, I couldn’t do that,” Annie said.

  “Oh, but you must.”

  “All right.”

  Paul clasped his hands behind his back, and Annie thrust the knife into his chest. Immediately blood began to spill from the “wound.”

  “Oh! Something went wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen!” Annie shouted, as Paul staggered around the room, his hands over the knife that was protruding from his chest. Many of the women in the audience screamed.

  Paul fell to his knees.

  “Get a doctor. Oh, someone get a doctor please!” Annie shouted.

  “No!” Paul said holding o
ut a hand toward her. Then, using both hands, and giving the illusion of a great struggle, Paul pulled on the knife. It came out, the blade red with blood, and Paul stood up. With a fanfare from the band, he made a sweeping bow.

  Matt knew how the trick worked. The knife had a blade that collapsed into the handle, and Paul had a packet of blood just inside his shirt. But Paul and Annie had pulled off the trick with aplomb, and the audience had enjoyed it.

  Suddenly, someone on the south side of the divided audience stood up and pointed a revolver toward the stage.

  “See if you can do that with a bullet, professor!” he shouted.

  Matt managed to reach him just in time to deflect his shot, while the terrified magician and his assistant hurried from the stage to the guffaws of the audience. Matt knocked the cowboy out, with one blow from his big fist; then he turned to the others and held out his hand.

  “If any of you gents are carrying a gun, you’d better give them to me now.”

  Two other cowboys looked at each other for a moment, then, with hangdog looks on their faces, they pulled pistols from their waistbands and handed them over.

  “What about you men on the north side? If you are carrying a gun, you had better hand it over now. If you don’t, and I find that you are armed, I’ll throw you in jail.”

  Two men from the north side turned over their guns.

  The show continued until the curtain came down, with no further incidents.

  The moon was shining brightly, sailing high in the velvet sky. It spilled a pool of iridescence through the window and onto the bed, bathing Sylvia in a soft, shimmering light. She wasn’t asleep but she was breathing softly, and Rex reached over gently to put his hand on her naked hip. He could feel the sharpness of her hip bone, and the soft yielding of her flesh. The contrasting textures were delightful to his sense of touch, and he let his hand rest there, enjoying a feeling of possession.

  “Rex,” Sylvia said. She was practically whispering the word, but Rex could hear it quite clearly, because they were lying in bed together and her lips were but an inch from his ear.

  “Yes?”

  “You aren’t just . . .” She started the sentence, but couldn’t finish it.”

  “I’m not just what?”

  “You aren’t just using me as you would a prostitute, are you?”

  Rex raised up on his elbow and looked down at her. “Sylvia, if I had been seen coming across Tumbling P property tonight, I could have been shot and killed. If I am seen going home tonight, I could be shot and killed. A man doesn’t take risks like that just to . . . lie with a woman. There has to be something more.”

  “I’m glad,” Sylvia said.

  Rex smiled, and put the tip of his finger to her lips. “You mean you are glad I wasn’t killed tonight?”

  “Yes,” Sylvia started to say—then she gasped. “Oh! Rex, you must go! Please, go now, and be careful! If something happened to you tonight because you came to see me, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  “I’m glad to know you care,” Rex said. “I’m so happy I could sing out loud!”

  “No!” Sylvia said. She grabbed him and kissed him to keep him quiet.

  “I like the way you have of shutting me up,” he said.

  “We can’t meet here like this again,” Sylvia said.

  “Huh-uh. I’ve just now found you. I’m not going to let you go.”

  “I’ll come up with a way,” Sylvia promised.

  “All right. I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

  Rex got dressed; then, with one final kiss, he climbed out her window, dropped to the ground, and ran across into the trees.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It was just after midnight on that same night when Strawn, Meeker, and Wallace, riding quietly, approached one of the BR Ranch line shacks. They stopped on a low hill and looked down at the small cabin, clearly visible in the moonlight.

  “Does Poindexter know we’re a-doin’ this?” Meeker asked.

  “No, he don’t know,” Strawn said.

  “Shouldn’t we have told him?”

  “Why should we tell him?”

  “’Cause we’re workin’ for him, ain’t we?”

  “No, we ain’t workin’ for him, Meeker. We’re workin’ for ourselves, remember?” Wallace asked.

  “Yeah,” Meeker said, smiling at the thought. “Yeah, you’re right. We’re workin’ for ourselves.”

  There was no movement in or around the cabin, which was good. “All right, Wallace, you know what to do,” Strawn said.

  Wallace dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to Meeker. Then, taking down a can he had tied to his saddle, he started walking toward the line shack.

  “Hurry up. Me ’n’ Meeker, will keep you covered,” Strawn said.

  Strawn and Meeker pulled their rifles from the saddle sheaths, and watched as Wallace picked his way, carefully, down the side of the hill. When he reached the cabin he began splashing the liquid onto to the wide, weathered boards. That done, he tossed the empty can aside, then lit a match and held it against one of the soaked boards. The kerosene caught quickly and flames spread up that board, then leaped over to the other boards that had been splashed with the kerosene. Dropping the can, he turned and ran back up the hill toward his horse and the other two riders.

  “Ian!” someone shouted from inside the cabin. “Ian, wake up! We’re on fire!”

  “What the hell?” Ian’s voice replied. “Och, mon, how’d we catch on fire?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, but we got to get out of here!”

  By now, smoke was pouring into the cabin and Strawn and the other two riders could hear the cowboys inside coughing.

  “Get ready,” Strawn said.

  As Strawn had expected, the two men, both still wearing long-handle underwear, came running outside, coughing and wheezing.

  “Now!” Strawn shouted, and all three of them opened up, shooting rifles toward the two BR Ranch cowboys. Both cowboys went down.

  When the firing stopped, Strawn walked down to where the two bodies lay, both bloodied with multiple gunshot wounds. Taking a sheet of paper from his pocket, Strawn wrote a message and placed it on one of the bodies, holding it down with a rock.

  Don’t be tying up any more of our men with barbed wire.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Strawn said. “Someone’s goin’ to see the fire and that’ll draw ’em here like pissants to a doughnut.”

  The three men rode away, leaving the burning shack and the two bodies behind them.

  Rex Ross had cut safely through the Wedge Hill Ranch and was heading back to the big house, when he saw the fire. Curious and concerned, he galloped toward it.

  “Hold it right there, or I’ll shoot you dead!” someone shouted, and Rex recognized Lou Turner’s voice.

  “Lou! No, wait! It’s me! It’s Rex!”

  “Oh, gee, I’m sorry!” Lou said.

  Rex rode up to the burning cabin where he saw Lou, Dean Kelly, his father, Bodine, Dooley, and Massey. He also saw two canvas-covered lumps on the ground, illuminated by the flickering orange light of the still burning cabin.

  “What happened?” Rex asked.

  “What happened? Ian and Harry have been killed, that’s what happened,” Ben said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Nowhere in particular.”

  “Nowhere in particular at midnight?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Rex said. “I’ve just been riding around. What happened here?” he asked again.

  “It looks like some riders from the Tumbling P paid us a visit,” Bodine said. “They burned the line shack and killed two of your men.”

  “How do you know whoever did this was from the Tumbling P?” Rex asked.

  “Who else could it be?” Ben asked, showing Rex the note they found with the bodies.

  “Mr. Ross, you give me the word and me ’n’ my two men will take care of this for you,” Bodine said.

  “Take care of it how?” Rex asked. />
  “Take care of it a way that will keep you out of it,” Bodine replied.

  “I’m not convinced that any of Poindexter’s regular riders did this,” Rex said.

  Bodine took his hat off and ran his hand across his bald head. “What do you mean you don’t believe it? There’s the burning line shack, and there are the two dead bodies. What is there not to believe?”

  “I don’t believe anyone from the Tumbling P did this.”

  “Then who do you think did?”

  “Hasn’t Poindexter hired some . . . detectives . . . like we have?” Rex set the word detectives apart from the rest of the question to express his disdain.

  “So what if he has? That would be the same thing, wouldn’t it?”

  “Pop, how did you feel when everyone said that we were the ones who killed the Patterson boy?” Rex asked.

  “What do you mean, how did I feel? We didn’t do it.”

  “You know it, I know it, and I suspect everyone on our ranch knows it. But that didn’t stop everyone else from believing that we did it. I’m just saying that I don’t think we need to be jumping to conclusions here.”

  Ben stared at his son for a long moment, but said nothing. Then he looked over at his foreman.

  “Get Ian and Harry into town first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dean replied.

  “So, what about this?” Bodine asked, taking in with a wave of his hand, the bodies and the shack, which had, by now, been almost totally consumed by the fire. “Do you want me and my men to take care of it?”

  “No, don’t do anything,” Ben said.

  “You’re making a big mistake.”

  “It’s my mistake to make.”

  Two days later, practically the entire town of Thirty Four Corners had turned out, the Ross supporters lining one side of the street and the Poindexter supporters on the other. They watched a wagon being pulled down the middle of the road. In the wagon were two coffins, and on the side of the wagon was a sign.