The Fire of Greed (4 page)

Chapter 4

FROM FLATTENED BOTTOMS THE SHAPE AND COLOR OF
anvils, dark purple-gray and menacing, the cumulus clouds billowed upward into downy tops the color and shape of cotton exploding from its bolls. They reminded Bladen Cole of the fields of his boyhood home, so distant in both time and space, in old Virginia.

He took a cautious sip from his canteen and hoped that he and the roan would cross paths with a spring, or even a year-round stream, pretty soon.

Cole took out the gold pocket watch that had once belonged to his father, wound it, and checked the time. He had been on the trail of the four men and their livestock for more than a day now, and the tracks showed no signs of their having slackened their pace. Indeed, they no doubt knew that haste was their only protection from the posse they had every reason to believe was in pursuit.

He scanned the surrounding mesas, shimmering in the dry heat of the mid-afternoon sun. In a landscape in which even the snakes and lizards had sought the shade, his eyes fell upon a cluster of black specks near the southern horizon.

He took out his small brass spyglass to get a closer look. Buzzards were circling the death site of some unlucky creature, probably a black-tailed deer that had been nailed by a cougar overnight. It probably had been killed at a watering hole, which gave Cole hope that he could soon water the roan.

Over the course of the next hour, Cole drew ever closer to the circling, scavenging birds. From time to time, one or two would dive, while others would climb into the sky. They were taking turns picking at the carcass.

At last, he crested a small ridge and gazed down at the clusters of buzzards.

There was no spring, and no deer. The birds were pecking away at two human bodies.

Cole looked around, straining his eyes to see whether there was any additional sign of people in the vicinity.

As he rode wide of the place where the bodies lay, he found the tracks that he had been following, as they continued south from the death scene. There were four sets of horseshoe tracks, and two of mule shoes. His initial supposition that the four men had been ambushed by the Apache was contradicted by the continued orderliness of the trail. An Apache attack would have scattered the horses, and they had not been scattered.

When he returned to examine the scene, he found the scavengers well into their meal.

He approached the first body, which was lying faceup near the charred embers of a fire. He shooed away the buzzards, who complained with raspy voices before reconvening at the second body some distance away.

Cole knelt to examine the remains. The eyes are usually the first to go, and there was little left of the face. It was a grisly sight not for the faint of heart, but Cole had seen worse.

There was a large hole in the forehead, which the buzzards had used to their advantage. Cole kicked the head to one side and saw a bullet hole in the back of skull. The hole in the forehead was the exit wound. The man had been shot in the back of the head at close range, probably while sitting and facing the fire.

He walked to the other body, which lay facedown about thirty yards away. Once again, he interrupted the late lunch of a cluster of angry birds. There was evidence that this man had been shot in the left shoulder and in the back several times. It was hard to tell exactly how many times because of the way that the buzzards had been picking at the body.

Piecing things together, Cole surmised that the man at the campfire had been shot first, probably taken by surprise. The other man had started running and had been hit in the shoulder before suffering a fatal shot.

The bounty hunter rolled him over and started going through his pockets for personal effects that would be useful later in making an identification. He found a letter, handwritten in a woman's hand, which he pocketed without reading and a pass of the kind that were issued to railroad employees. It was from the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. The man also had two silver dollars in his pocket.

A search of the other body yielded another Denver & Rio Grande pass and a pocket watch slightly smaller than the one Cole he himself carried. There was less than a dollar's worth of coins in the man's pocket. Cole left these, but kept the watch and the two passes.

Ezra Waldron had been swift to dismiss any complicity by the rival railroad, yet apparently that railroad, or at least two of its employees, was somehow involved. On one level, Cole was pleased to have seen the cocky Waldron's assumption disproved; on another, he wondered what this meant.

He allowed himself about fifteen minutes of exertion to try to cover the bodies with boulders before he started out again. It was a fool's errand, he thought. Even if the buzzards were deterred, the coyotes could dig under the rocks—if they were feeling ambitious. Still, there was something in his nature that insisted all humans deserved the dignity of at least an
attempt
at a decent burial.

As he carried rocks, Cole wondered about the railroad passes.

Had these thieves really been Denver & Rio Grande men?

Was the railroad itself behind the robbery?

If the latter, why had the men fled south, rather than heading north to the Denver & Rio Grande stronghold in Colorado?

Why had these two been murdered by their accomplices?

Probably it was the oldest reason in the book—nine grand split two ways is worth twice as much as when it's split four ways.

* * *

THE WESTERN SKY WAS TURNING THE COLOR OF A BUTTERNUT
squash when he finally came upon a cluster of vegetation that marked the presence of a spring. Smelling the water, his roan practically galloped to the thin trickle. When he dismounted, Cole lay facedown, submerging his face up to his ears as the roan slurped.

After refilling his canteens and resting his horse for a while, Cole pressed on, intending to use all of the daylight that he was offered before camping for the night.

The demise of the two men would improve the odds for Cole when he finally caught up with the survivors, but in the meantime, it gave them each two saddled horses to trade off as mounts.

It grew cooler as the sun waned. A breeze fluttered and crackled through the dry sagebrush. The roan wheezed with what seemed to be a sigh of relief.

Cole studied the horizon with his spyglass. Far in the distance, in generally the same direction as the tracks were leading, he saw a cluster of lights.

He reached the tiny settlement shortly after the sun had set, and darkness began to envelop the land.

“
Has visto gringo viajeros pasan por este lugar?
” Bladen Cole asked when a kid emerged from one of the buildings. He hoped that he had not butchered the Spanish too badly in asking whether the gringos had come this way. Without speaking, the boy gestured toward the west.

“Cuándo?”

In reply to Cole's wanting to know when, the boy indicated that it had been when the sun was still in the top of the sky.

“
Muchas gracias
,” Cole said, touching a finger to the brim of his hat.

The bandits had now turned toward the Rio Grande, as Cole had expected they would.

* * *

BLADEN COLE AWOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO THE
sound of a cactus wren chortling near his head. The sun was not quite up, but the dawn was vast and the view of the purple-hued desert landscape was spectacular.

A moonless night swallows the desert quickly in her black velvet glove, so Cole had suspended his pursuit not long after he passed through the settlement. He had camped on a hillside above the anonymous cluster of homes, near enough to watch it in case any of the bandits doubled back for any reason, but far enough to remain unseen.

He made some cold coffee and ate some hardtack as the roan grazed in a nearby patch of bunchgrass. Cole disliked going without a cook fire, but he had now closed the distance between himself and his prey to half a day, and did not need a column of smoke to mark his location.

At the same time, he scanned the horizon with his telescope, looking for a plume of smoke that would betray
their
location.

There it was. He imagined two men enjoying a
hot
cup of coffee. For their second night on the trail, they had a campfire. They made no attempt to disguise their location, under the apparent assumption that a steady pace and a twelve-hour head start would keep them ahead of any posse.

Despite the fact that their trail made them easy to follow, they were probably right, Cole admitted. Large posses are cumbersome, slow-moving contrivances that waste far more time staying organized than a single horseman like himself.

The cocky assuredness of the bandits gave their hunter an odd sensation. Likewise their predictability. They had done what he had expected them to do, contrary to what the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe men believed.

Cole reminded himself of the old cautionary tale which insists that just as you lull yourself into believing you have figured out a riddle, you are in for an unexpected twist.

Chapter 5

IT
WAS NOON WHEN BLADEN COLE ENCOUNTERED THE
unexpected twist in the untangling of his riddle.

At sunup, he had picked up the trail of the four horses and the two mules a half mile west of the no-name settlement. The pace of their westward advance, made on this stretch the previous afternoon, was steady, though the distance between the horseshoe and muleshoe impressions was slightly less than it had been during the previous morning. The heat of the day had naturally slowed them, just as he had expected.

He followed them until the midday sun was high in the sky, erasing shadows and forcing even the snakes to seek refuge under rocks. He paused for a sip from his canteen, certain that he was now close to the place from which he had seen the campfire smoke curling up into the sky at dawn. It was here, as he proceeded to crest the ridge above a narrow arroyo, that Cole encountered the unexpected.

Below him was the remnants not of a campfire, but of an enormous bonfire. He saw the charred remains of sticks and scraps of oily creosote brush that had burned like an inferno at some point during the night—and which had smoldered like a campfire at dawn.

Cole cursed himself. He felt like a fool.

They had built the fire in a ravine where flames could not be seen by a potential pursuer at night, but where the residual smoke visible at dawn would look like an average campfire. They had left during the night, deliberately riding out under cover of darkness to add miles to the lead they knew they had.

Did they
know
they were being followed, or had they simply used this ruse just in case?

Cole took some consolation in knowing that their attention was still focused on getting away rather than standing to fight. They were still running anxiously, but they were running
smart
.

If they
had
spotted him and planned an ambush, the ambush would already have taken place. He breathed a sigh of relief, looking up at the rim above the arroyo from which they could easily have turned him into a sitting duck.

Cole nudged the roan and climbed up out of the ravine as quickly as possible. He pulled the small telescope from his saddlebag.

In the distance, but not too far in the distance, a pair of buzzards circled. Cole's mind naturally retraced the events involving buzzards on the previous day and fashioned a scenario under which there had been a second shootout, leaving Cole with only a single man to pursue. If he was lucky, and he supposed that he was
not
, the imagined gunfight would have resulted in both men having been fatally wounded, and the chase would be over.

A half hour later, from a ridge over which the tracks of the bandits led, it was revealed to the bounty hunter that neither of these fancies was true. A single horse stood on the desert floor as the two buzzards circled lazily high above.

Cole cautiously surveyed the scene, looking intently for the other horses and the men.

Was this horse somehow bait for an ambush?

He looked left and right. He looked back behind him. He studied the scrapings of metal shoes on rocks and gravel, which constituted the trail he followed, for evidence that the men, either or both, had turned and doubled back to outflank him.

Seeing nothing, he returned his attention to the lone horse.

Through the spyglass, Cole watched the horse. He shook his head and mane, and looked around. Cole's roan whinnied, and the horse looked toward them with a forlorn expression. He took a step, and tried to take another. Shuddering with obvious pain, he stumbled, but did not fall.

Cole now knew what the buzzards knew. The horse had gone lame, and had been abandoned. Sooner or later, the horse would grow weak and unable to stand. Sooner or later—sooner in this heat—the horse would topple over and lie helpless. The buzzards would wait. They were, by nature, not in a hurry.

Cole pieced together events that had occurred as the riders crossed the moonless landscape during the night. In the darkness, they had reached the downslope from the ridge, which was invisible and unexpected. As they had clamored down the sudden decline, this horse had twisted an ankle and gone lame, unable to walk.

They should have shot him to put him out of his immediate misery and the inevitable suffering demise, but they could not risk the sound of a gunshot, which would have carried for miles in the nocturnal stillness.

For the sake of the pitiful creature and his painful final moments, Cole knew that he should now do as they had not done, but
he
could not risk the sound of a gunshot, which could carry for miles in the shimmering stillness of the midday heat.

Carefully descending the slope, now clearly visible, the bounty hunter drew the fourteen-inch blade from the scabbard inside his saddlebag.

* * *

BLADEN COLE'S THIRD DESERT SUNSET IN HIS PURSUIT OF
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe bandits formed the backdrop for several columns of smoke from distant fires in the towns and settlements scattered along the Rio Grande. There had been smoke rising from the cook fires of humans in this broad valley for untold thousands of years, and from fires kindled by European hands for more than three hundred.

The ancientness of the river and of the trails turned to roads that paralleled it, were of neither interest nor concern to Cole. To him, the river marked only a milestone in his quest.

As the sun descended through blood red skies toward the silhouette of the distant western mountains, Cole reached a point where he could look down into the valley of the Rio Grande. The river lay like a snake, reflecting the color of the skies. Along its banks were the pinpricks of yellow light marking the locations, large and small, of human habitation.

The trail that he had followed for the better part of three days had now merged into a larger trail which led into the valley and became blurred by the addition of dozens of other shoe impressions in the dust. From here, he would now have to depend on intuition, rather than physical evidence, to follow his prey.

It had been his supposition that the men would cross the Rio Grande and continue west into the mountains, but he knew that he had been wrong at least once today.

He had also earlier supposed that he would catch, or at least catch
up to
, his prey before they reached the Rio Grande, but their ruse with the fire had cost him this possibility. It had cost
them
a horse, but they still had one to spare.

An alternate possibility that they would be meeting someone in a Rio Grande settlement had crossed his mind, but Cole still clung to his original theory. He was still sure that they planned to get away, far away, and hide themselves until they felt it safe to start spending the money. They had already killed two of their partners, so it was not likely they would rendezvous with
more
partners.

* * *

“EVENING,” COLE SAID, NOTICING A MAN AT WORK IN A
small corral near the first clump of buildings that he saw as he reached the road paralleling the Rio Grande. The man looked part Indian and part Mexican, but seeing him dressed as an Anglo cowpuncher, Cole took a chance with English rather than his mutilated Spanish.

“Evening,” the man repeated, looking up from what he was working on.

“You happen to see a couple of fellows pass this way a few hours ago with two pack mules?”

“Lot of people pass this way with pack stock,” the man said, stating the obvious fact that they were practically on top of a major route between cities such as Bernalillo in the north, or Socorro and Mesilla to the south.

“They would have had a spare saddle horse with them,” Cole added. “That might have set them apart.”

“I've been gone most of the day, but probably wouldn't have noticed if I'd have been here,” the man said, nodding at the piles of rope and tack with which he was working.

“Much obliged,” Cole said, touching the brim of his hat and reining the roan back toward the road.

“You might want to ask Grandfather,” the man said, laying down the rope he was working with and walking toward the perimeter of the corral. “He does nothing but sit and watch the road.”

“Where would I find him?”

“Down there. I'll show you,” the man said, climbing between the fence rails.

“Down there” turned out to be a small shack about two dozen yards closer to the main wagon road.

As they rounded the corner, an old man seated in a large handmade armchair looked up at them with dark piercing eyes that betrayed no expression. His long hair, which tumbled nearly to his shoulders, but which was cut short in a jagged line across his forehead, was as white as the cumulus. His skin was wrinkled and leathery, making him look like a centenarian, although the sparkle in his eyes made him seem half that age.

“
Abuelo
,” the younger man said, addressing the white-haired man as “Grandfather.” Cole wasn't sure if he was the man's actual grandfather, or simply someone so old that he was called by that term generally.
“Ves todo, no lo hace usted?”

Having been asked if he saw
everything
, the old man nodded and turned away peevishly.

The younger man asked him the same question that Cole had previously presented, adding the part about the spare saddle horse.

Grandfather nodded in the affirmative, pointing to the road.

Before Cole could say anything more, the young man asked Grandfather to tell him when they had come by and which way they had been headed.

The old man spoke a few words, chewed some tobacco thoughtfully, and spit into a large pottery spittoon. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and continued talking, making what seemed to be an elaboration of his earlier comments. His Spanish was heavily accented by a Pueblo dialect, and Cole could make out almost none of his words. He was glad to have a translator.

“Grandfather said that they were here just after he ate his lunch. They came from the same direction as you,” the younger man said. “They were in a big hurry, he says. They were in what he calls a ‘white man's hurry.' For him that's just about any kind of hurry, because Grandfather is never in a hurry of any kind.”

“So I see.” Cole nodded, observing that the younger man didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to tell what Grandfather had said about where they were headed.

“He says that they were in a big hurry to get across the Rio Grande,” the younger man continued in his own unhurried way. “He sent 'em down to the ford by Sabino.”

“About . . . how far is that?” Cole asked, trying to space out his words to distinguish himself from the objects of obvious derision who were in a “white man's hurry.”

“Mmmm,” the younger man said thoughtfully. “I reckon you'd be able to ride it in about an hour.”

Cole looked at the sky. While they had been speaking, the sun had gone down, and the stars were starting to appear.

“I wouldn't try and cross down there in the dark, though,” the younger man advised.

Cole nodded. He had seen recent evidence of imprudent nighttime riding by men who were in too much of a “white man's hurry.”