Chapter 11

1883: The Porcupine’s children

It was mostly Li Shun’s plan, the horror of her proposed vengeance fully equal to the ghastly depravity of the men who visited their unimaginable evils upon that house.

Apparently Maurice had told her all about what he’d seen and his suspicions about the orphanage the day after he’d been there. Ever since, while Maurice had been trying to wipe it from his memory, Shun had been thinking of a way to save the children and to deal with the monsters who took their murderous pleasure in the brutal torment of innocents.

Li Shun’s plan called for her to have a friend mind the bake shop, on Friday, after Shun had completed the day’s baking. Shun would then take a wagon and a generous stock of samples of her baked goods to the small store in Manassa, to see if they would be interested in buying from her if she shipped baked goods to Romeo on the train. For this ostensible business excursion, Maurice would accompany her.

She hadn’t counted on another helper, so my inclusion was all but haphazard: I was to hide in the wagon, under a tarp with the four cans of kerosene. That’s where the plan began to break down, in my estimation.

I proposed some refinements that were more realistic and somewhat more gruesome.

Manassa and Romeo were in Conejos (coh-NEH-hohs) County, which adjoined Alamosa County to its south. The trip to Manassa took us just over three hours; I was along on the pretext of going fishing, no hiding necessary. We arrived at the village store just after eleven o’clock.

Shun’s sales pitch to the proprietor fell on deaf ears, however. He admitted her products were delicious, but it turns out Mormon women consider house-wifery a sacred calling. Sending baked goods to a village of polygamous, multi-wife households was as pointless as shipping snow to the North Pole.

Despite the pridefulness, Shun was still able to sell all of her sample stock from the back of the wagon as word of mouth spread the news of her presence near the store. She sold eight loaves of white bread, four of rye, two dozen sticky buns, four dozen crispy oatmeal cookies, a dozen muffins, and four pies.

One woman, looking for additional stock, went to move the tarpaulin that hid the four gallons of kerosene, but I managed to sit my butt down on the metal kegs before she was able to uncover them. “Fishing worms,” I explained.

She gave me a funny look.

“Imported,” I said. “An oversized variety. From, uh, Russia. They need to be kept out of the sun.”

My role, during this part of the scheme, was to keep up a constant barrage of complaints about wanting to go to the river to try the fishing. This was so that people would hear that my fishing was our excuse for lingering into the evening. I’d rented a simple bamboo pole at the mercantile in Alamosa. The pole came with the requisite line and hooks.

The Rio Grande, a gentled mountain river thereabouts, flowed past about three miles east of Manassa, the opposite the direction from the orphanage and the Romeo depot. We weren’t concerned about using the roads at night because the main wagon trails were kept well-graded by county road crews. The grading equipment and the mules and tack were on loan from the D&RG, as were an experienced maintenance-of-way worker for each county.

We finally got away about twelve thirty and we spent the afternoon at the rio.

We unharnessed the mules, hobbled them, and let them graze the lush grasses along the riverbank. I put a hook in the water, but without bait. We were too nervous to relax. We kept going over the plan, reminding each other not to forget one thing or another. Finally, exhausted from the stress, we all fell asleep.

Shun woke us just at sunset, a few minutes past six. The almanac had said we were two days short of a full moon, which meant we’d see moonrise around eight o’clock. By six thirty, we were on our way.

The moon was just coming over the Sangre de Cristos when Maurice strolled up the drive, unarmed, hands in his pockets, whistling Camptown Races. I was hidden about halfway to the house, in the tall grass between the sycamores that lined the drive and an irrigation ditch that ran parallel.

Right on cue, the guard came striding down the drive, a shotgun held at the ready, but still aimed upward.

“Hold on there mister. Where d’you think you’re goin’?” Something about the voice sounded familiar. It only increased my feeling of dread.

“I want to get a room at the boardin’ house,” Maurice explained, all innocence.

“This ain’t no boardin’ house, bub, it’s a private home. Now get off the property.”

“They told me at the depot there was a boardin’ house out this way.”

“Well this ain’t it. Now I told you to git!” Th e guard made a pushing motion with the shotgun.

Maurice craned his neck, as if to see around the guard. “You sure they don’t take boarders? Damn big for a private home. Who lives here? One a’ them Mormons and his twenty wives?”

“That ain’t none of your business, ass--” and he folded, crumpling to the drive, following a hefty tap from the crowbar I was swinging.

I turned the unconscious guard onto his back and bent his head toward the rising moon.

“I’ll be damned. Alfred Short.”

Maurice was already tying the man’s ankles. He asked, “You know this man?”

“Yeah. He’s one of the BIA guards on the Jicarilla reservation.”

“Looks like he found a new job.”

Shun was walking up the drive with two of the gallon cans. My next assignment was to bring the other two, along with some other paraphernalia, from where they were hidden, next to the culvert that passed the irrigation ditch under the road. Shun stopped to assume the job of restraining and gagging Short and I heard Maurice explaining to her who the guard was as he lifted the two kerosene cans to carry them up to the house.

On my way to the house with load, I stopped to help Shun roll Short into the tall grass. Shun had tied Short’s hands behind his back, and we secured them to a sycamore tree. Then I opened one of the cans and splashed some kerosene down the front of his trousers.

Then Shun and I walked up to the house, where Maurice was already carefully dribbling kerosene along the lower clapboards of the exterior. I set one can each at the front and back corners of the house, then accompanied Shun to the exterior cellar door at the back of the house.

This was the tricky part, because it could get noisy.

As we feared, there was a hasp and a padlock on the cellar door. I was about to use the crowbar and Shun lit a match to help me see the hasp fastenings better. Bent nails: definitely not a carpenter’s work. Then I noticed the lock. It was a cheap but popular padlock made from stamped metal pieces by a Gary, Indiana company. I’d learned to pick it when I was with the Pinkertons. I brought out my pocket knife and opened the blade. The trick with this lock wash to push the pins down one at a time, back to front. I had it open in seconds.

I lifted the door slowly and it began to screech, more likely from misaligned hinges than from corrosion. I ran over to get the kerosene can, splashed a little on the hinges and returned the can to the corner of the house. The cellar door opened with only a quiet groan. So far, so good.

There was another door at the bottom of the steps, but this one was locked on the inside with a deadbolt.

I had Shun light another match and hold it while I examined the edge where the door met the frame. There was nearly a quarter inch between them and I easily spotted the bolt. If whoever had chosen the padlock had also chosen this deadbolt, then maybe I wouldn’t have to kick the door in.

I wedged the sharp end of the crowbar into the crack and pushed it against the bolt. I’d sharpened the one end just for purposes. This was another trick from the Pinkertons. Using that sharp edge to take a bite into the bolt close to the frame, I levered it back toward the door, pushing the bolt back into its mechanism case. It was slow going, moving the bolt about an eighth of an inch at a time. Fortunately, it was also a low-end lock, so the bolt’s throw wasn’t very long and there was no resistance to the reversing movement. I had it open in less than a minute. I tucked the crowbar behind my belt in the small of my back.

Gently pushing Shun back against the wall behind me, I drew my revolver and slowly pushed open the door.

Inside was a hall about thirty feet long, lit only by an oil lamp in a holder on the wall at the opposite end, where a stairway descended from above. On either side of the hall were four doors with small barred opening at head height. All the doors were locked, but only with sliding barrel bolts that could be operated by anyone from the hall side of the door.

Then I heard a slap that sounded like a blow, and there was the screech of a small child. I realized the last door on the right wasn’t fully closed. A voice growled, “Don’t be biting me, you little turd.”

Shun went to slip by me on my left, but I stretched out my arm and held her back. I looked at her and held my pistol barrel up across my lips like a finger. “Shh,” I whispered, then used the barrel to point toward the unlatched door. She nodded and took a step backward

I walked carefully down the center of the hall’s concrete floor, crunching beneath my boots whatever grit was there. I was crouching a bit, so as not to be seen by the children I presumed were in the cells. I didn’t want to take the chance they’d start calling out.

I reached the unfastened door, approaching from the hinged side. I very slowly lifted up to look through the opening in the door.

Inside, the bony white hindquarters of the Reverend Harley Simms were bouncing forward and back as his penis pushed in and out of the mouth of an unconscious young Indian boy.

I stepped around the door as I pulled it open and I said, “Excuse me Reverend Simms. Could I ask you a question.”

As I spoke he turned to me in surprised bewilderment that was transforming quickly into annoyance. However, his facial features relaxed when my pistol barrel crashed into the side of his head.

I grabbed the small child as Simms fell to the floor, where he landed partially on a thin mattress that was on the floor. The little boy wasn’t breathing. Shun came in and took him from me, then just shook him, hard. The boy gasped for air and Shun handed him back to me and I followed her back into the hall, the boy still gasping. I closed and latched the door after I exited the cell.

Shun had gone to the cell across the hall and opened the door. Then she came back out, took a lamp from another wall sconce, lit it, and went back into the room. In a half minute she came back out with two young boys, each holding and eating a pieces of the fudge she’d made to bring along for this purpose. The boy in my arms started wriggling and pointing to the candy the other boys had.

I set him down and said, “Very quietly ask the lady for some fudge, but it’s important to stay quiet.” All three boys looked cowed by the sound of my voice, though I had made an effort to speak softly.

Just then Maurice came in from the outside steps and the boys cowered back toward the open cell door.

I said, “Don’t worry. He’s the man who brought the lady with the fudge.” But the boys still looked frightened, their eyes moving between me and Maurice, as he passed behind me, a length of lumber in his hand, with the purpose of securing the interior cellar door.

Then Shun came back into the hall with three little girls, each with a piece of fudge at her lips. I said, “Shun, these children seem to be afraid of men. Maurice and I will wait on the outside steps. Let us know if you need help.”

“Yes, go,” she said.

I went to see if Maurice needed help, but he had made short work of his task. I urged him to follow me to the outer steps.

“What?” he said.

“The children, they’re afraid of men. You and I are scaring them. Let’s let Shun handle it and only help if she asks. Is everything ready?”