The Fire of Greed (11 page)

Chapter 18

BLADEN COLE HAD HEARD THE SINGLE GUNSHOT AT A HALF
mile distance from the pueblo, and had watched with his spyglass as a lone man emerged from one of the adobe buildings carrying a light-colored bag. He could tell by the red and white striped shirt that it was Muriday, and he wished that his optics gave him adequate resolution to see the expression on the man's face.

He wondered who got shot.

Cole knew, from having discovered the pack horse grazing on a hillside, that the foursome had lost their food supplies. This explained their having paused to rob the people at the pueblo. It seemed an almost whimsical irony that men who possessed $9,000 in gold were compelled by dread of hunger to steal from some of the poorest people on the continent.

The theft also confirmed what Cole had supposed, that they were provisioning to bypass the Anglo settlements in the Rio Grande valley. He was pleased. It would be a lot simpler to follow them in open country than through towns and villages.

They left the pueblo quickly, practically at a gallop, as though intending to make up for lost time.

With the halter rope of the pack horse secured to his saddle horn, Cole mounted up and followed. He passed some distance from the pueblo, but he saw the people standing up there watching, and he knew they saw him. He waved as he passed to the point where it was clear that he had no intention of stopping.

Nobody waved back.

* * *

“GONNA SAY WHO YOU SHOT UP THERE?” LYNCH ASKED
Muriday as they plodded north.

The first time he had asked, the bloodshot anger in his partner's eyes told him to back off—but that was an hour ago.

It looked as though Muriday would avoid answering again, turning away from Lynch to spit a wad of tobacco which he was chewing.

At last, he turned back and said simply, “Nobody.”

Lynch just nodded, as though to say that he would ask no more on the subject.

“Almost plugged an old lady up there,” Muriday said at last, as though unburdening himself of an embarrassment.

“Why'd you almost do that?”

“Because I decided not to after my finger was already pullin' on the trigger. Put the slug in a wall.”

“I mean why was you gonna pop the old lady?”

“Got slapped hard across the face.”

“How'd that happen?”

“I was havin' a little fun with a young one up there. She didn't like me doin' that.”

“Sure wouldn't mind having a woman myself about now,” Lynch admitted.

“This was a fine one, all right,” Muriday explained. “Fine and smooth and just right in all the right places. Don't feel right about killin' a woman, but you gotta use 'em for what they're made for. Had half a notion to take her along.”

“That would have made things real complicated,” Lynch said with a nod. “Last thing we need is having all these Indians out here mad at us . . .
and
chasin' after us.”

“Plenty of time for women after we get us up to Santa Fe,” Muriday said, spitting a cheekful of tobacco on the ground.

* * *

BLADEN COLE OPENED THE PACK SADDLE BY THE LIGHT OF
a growing moon and ate well, knowing that the foursome camped in the broad valley below were rationing their victuals. They had provisioned for two weeks in the wilderness, so there was plenty from which to choose. He even found a jar of dates. He enjoyed a few, then a few more, and packed the jar up for later.

It was about four o'clock, reckoned by the position of the moon, when he was awakened by a ruckus down below. He trained his spyglass on the fire circle and saw two men, Muriday and Lynch judging by the fact they were untied, running almost comically, in concentric circles. He saw another man, bound hands and feet, wriggle from a bedroll, but he saw no evidence of a fourth.

Someone had escaped.

Cole looked around cautiously, although it was unlikely that the escapee would have climbed to his elevation to get away. In such a situation it is a natural inclination to move as quickly as possible, and going uphill slows a man's pace.

One of the two untied at the campsite—Cole couldn't tell whether it was Lynch or Muriday—fired two shots from a rifle into the air. Apparently the intention was intimidation, or he would have aimed at something.

Damned fool way to try to intimidate, Cole thought, shaking his head. The shots only served to alert the escapee to the fact that his absence had been discovered and to give him a precise idea of how long of a lead he had. If he was far enough away not to make detectable noise while running, he would continue to run until first light, because a search could not be mounted until then.

The circles in which Lynch and Muriday were wandering served to indicate that their biggest problem at first light was in which direction, in the 360-degree arc of possibilities, they should begin their search.

Cole pondered the same question. Returning back toward the south was out. How could this man go back, unarmed, toward the pueblo which his companion had just robbed? To the west lay virtually nothing but mountains and desert, where a man would probably not survive on foot. As Cole surmised, the best option for a man on foot would be to make for civilization, and the closet settlements were due east, less than a half day's ride away or longer on foot, on the banks of the Rio Grande.

* * *

FOR TWO NIGHTS, JASPER GARDNER HAD LAIN IN HIS BEDROLL,
studying the ropes with his fingers, planning
how he might untie the knot that secured his feet. His fingers could not reach the knots that bound his wrists, but he
could
get his fingers into those at his ankles. At last, as his captors both dozed, he seized the opportunity, and ran with it. More correctly, he tiptoed with it, straight toward the picket line, with his boots under his arm, and wishing that he could have untied his hands so that he could also have grabbed a gun.

As he reached the horses, he watched Lynch wake up, stand, look around, and stretch. He could have gone ahead with his plan to mount up and ride away bareback, but without a gun, there was no way that he could do this at night without being caught—and
shot
.

Faced with a choice of waiting patiently to be sure that Lynch fell asleep again, or getting away on foot sooner rather than later, Gardner anxiously chose the latter, and regretted it within a matter of minutes as he slowly crossed the moonlit desert in his stocking feet. There was, by then, no going back.

He stumbled onward, as quietly as possible, until he was far enough away to finally sit down, find a stick, and use it to pry open the knots on the ropes that secured his hands.

This done, he pulled on his boots and made for the Rio Grande, not yet sure what he would do when he got there but try to get someone to take pity on a poor man who wandered out of the wilderness with rope burns on his wrists. He would try somehow to get a horse and, hopefully, a gun. Then he could intercept the others and retrieve the gold—
his
gold.

Gardner thought of the injured Stanton, whom he had abandoned, but not for long and not hard. As they had since the day he sold his mother's home to the carpetbagger, Jasper Gardner's thoughts centered mainly on the welfare and aspirations of Jasper Gardner.

Muriday, Lynch, and Stanton mounted up under the loosest definition of “first light” that could be imagined. Indeed, the western sky was still as black as charcoal.

“Still say it ain't no time o' day to be tracking somebody,” Lynch complained.

“Gotta find that sneaky devil,” Muriday insisted.

“Why?” Lynch asked. “We still got his partner, and we still got the loot.”

“
Because
,” Muriday explained angrily, “we can't go bringing back only half of the robbers and leave one at large. We might get only half the reward.”

“Let's just tell 'em he was killed by Indians.”

“Can't do that,” Stanton interjected. “I'll squeal on you.”

“Shut up or I'll blow off your head and we'll take you back dead instead of alive,” Muriday shouted.

“Then there ain't no way to prove that
you
didn't take this dough in the first place.”

Muriday had guessed correctly that Gardner was headed toward the Rio Grande, though he realized in the cold, dim light of the promised dawn that he faced a serious challenge. Finding a man in this vast patch of desert, studded by thousands of cactus and scrubby little bushes, all of which looked like a man standing when glimpsed at great distance, was like finding the proverbial needle in a sea of needles.

It drove him mad—in both definitions of that temperament—that he could at this moment be looking directly at Gardner and not see him. This was an observation which he chose not to share with Lynch, although it would have been hard for Lynch not to come to the same conclusion by his own observations.

Chapter 19

“GOOD EVENING, MADEMOISELLE, AND MERCI BEAUCOUP,”
Amos Richardson said as Therese de la Gravière poured him a glass of the blood red wine, all the way from France, which he had been favoring of late.

“
Pas de quoi
, you are most welcome,
Monsieur Doctor
,” she said, returning his smile.

“I don't see Nicolette here this evening,” Richardson observed.

“We all need a night off once in a while,” she replied. “She's at the Governor's Palace tonight.”

“Well now, what takes her to the Governor's Palace?”

“There is a soiree, a reception for a government official who is visiting Santa Fe . . . a Mr. Schurz, I believe.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Hayes's secretary of the interior, we knew him as
General
Schurz during the war,” Richardson said with a nod of recognition. “He was on the
other
side, but that is no longer here nor there. I had read in the newspaper that he is in the city. He arrived yesterday on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. What, pray tell, is Nicolette's interest in visiting dignitaries?”

“She is on the arm of Mr. Waldron,” Therese said, smiling. “She mentioned that she too had read about Mr. Schurz in the paper, and he invited her to the soiree.”

“Does she seem to be finding his company pleasant?”

“
Comme ci, comme ça
. More than she will admit . . . at least to me . . . perhaps to herself. We'll have to wait and see. They have been to the theater as well. She was more pleased with the play, I think, than with the company, but I believe that she did find him agreeable.”

“And you? Do you find Mr. Waldron to be agreeable?”

“Nicolette is of that age . . . I have told her as much . . . when she should be entertaining suitors. Mr. Waldron
is
a gentleman; a high-placed gentleman taking an interest in one's daughter is almost never a
bad
thing, although I
do
fear his taking her away to the East.”

“You could perhaps join them back East?”

“My life is here,” Therese said with a smile, looking at the doctor in a certain way. “When we first came to Mexico, I pined for France. When we first came to Santa Fe, I yearned for France. Now Santa Fe is my home.”

* * *

“MAY I PRESENT MISS DE LA GRAVIÈRE, SECRETARY,” EZRA
Waldron said, introducing her to the guest of honor.

“Ah, de la Gravière.” Schurz smiled, taking Nicolette's hand. “
Enchanté. Bonsoir, Mademoiselle de la Gravière
.”

“
Guten Abend
,” Nicolette said, returning the German-born cabinet officer's French with a greeting in his native tongue.

“
Sprechen sie Deutsche?
” Schurz replied, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

“No, sir,” Nicolette replied with a smile. “But Mama has always told me that it is polite to greet people in the language of their birth . . . as you did with me.”

“I see,” Schurz said. “I daresay your English is superior to mine, even after twenty-eight years in this country.”

“I am afraid that I have come more recently than you, sir, though I have spent most of my years in New Mexico.”

“Which we are pleased to have more closely bound to the nation by means of the railroad, thanks to our mutual friend, Mr. Waldron.”

“It will do great things for commerce, which pleases me personally,” Nicolette told him.

“How is that,
mademoiselle
?”

“My mother and I . . . we own the restaurant Refugio del Viajero, which is nearby, and we anticipate an increasing number of customers from across the land. We would be pleased to welcome
you
, as well, sir, if your schedule permits while you are in Santa Fe.”

“I would be honored,
mademoiselle
, though my visit to your wonderful city is regrettably short.”

With one more handshake, they parted company and the secretary was introduced to another guest of the governor.

“I forgot to curtsy,” Nicolette said.

“I don't think he cared,” Waldron assured her. “Thank you once again for joining me at a moment's notice like this.”

“Thank you for inviting me to join you. I enjoyed meeting Mr. Schurz. I do hope that he might have occasion to visit the Refugio.”

“The schedules of politicians are, as I am sure you understand, not theirs to do with as they please.”

“Of course,” Nicolette said.

“Do you know Tobias Gough?” Waldron asked her.

“I read his column in the
Santa Fe New Mexican
,” Nicolette said.

“Let me introduce you . . . Tobias . . . may I introduce you to Nicolette de la Gravière.”

“Miss de la Gravière,” the newspaperman said, turning to the young woman in the long crimson dress with lips the color of chilies. “It is a pleasure to meet you . . . although I believe I recognize . . . It's hard to forget a lovely face.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gough, it is a pleasure to meet you,” Nicolette said with a smile as she took his extended hand. “I
have
seen you a time or two at Refugio del Viajero.”

“The restaurant,” Gough said, trying to place her.

“Miss de la Gravière and her mother are the proprietors,” Waldron explained.

“Of course,” Gough said, making the connection. “That's where I've seen you.”

“I enjoy your column,” Nicolette said. “You have an uncanny gift for getting to the bottom of things.”

“Thank you.” Gough beamed, pleased to be noticed by such an attractive lady. “I try my best.”

“Will you be accompanying the secretary as he tours the territory?”

“Well he
has
made news,” Gough said.

“That's what one might expect from transferring the Indian Bureau from the War Department to his Interior Department. Quite controversial, I've read . . . but a wise decision in my opinion.”

“You have an ear for current affairs, Miss de la Gravière,” Gough observed.

“I read the paper, Mr. Gough,” she said with a smile.

“Good evening, Ezra,” a voice from behind Nicolette boomed. She turned to see the ample form of Joseph Ames, the noticeably overweight colleague of her escort.

“Hello, Joseph,” Waldron said, shaking his hand. “You know Tobias Gough . . . May I present Miss de la Gravière.”

“How do you, Miss Gravière,” he said, nodding to Gough and gripping Nicolette's hand with his fleshy paw. “I'm Joseph Ames . . . of the railroad. You must be the lovely French girl from the cantina whom Ezra has mentioned.”

“I must be indeed,” Nicolette said with a smile.

“It's not a cantina,” Waldron corrected him. “It's a restaurant, and a fine restaurant at that.”

“Sorry, ma'am,” Ames said. “I stand corrected. I'm new to the territory, and new to the . . . um, the native cuisine.”

“You should visit the Refugio del Viajero sometime so that we may introduce you to the
native
cuisine,” Nicolette said with a broad smile.

“I shall,” Ames promised noncommittally. “Now, if you don't mind, young lady, I'd like to steal Ezra for a minute or two for some
man
talk?”

“Of course,” Nicolette said, bowing her head slightly in mock deference, which Ames did not perceive.

“Has there been any news?” Ames asked. “Will these people be caught? Where is that bounty hunter that you hired?”

“There has been nothing,” Waldron admitted. “I don't know that we
will
hear . . .”

“We
must
get that money by the end of the month,” Ames said, visibly worried. “This thing is getting out of control. We should have hired more than one man . . . This is obviously beyond his ability.”

“It is out of our control, Joseph,” Waldron said firmly.

“I don't like seeing things
this
out of control,” Ames retorted. “I believe that we must consider reporting this affair to the proper authorities and getting a sheriff's posse on the trail of these men.”

“A trail gone cold and stale after a week's time?” Waldron said sarcastically.

“A trail which must be followed, and the sheriff is the professional authority who
should have
been involved
before
this trail went stale,” Ames asserted.

“We've made our bed, Joseph. We cannot afford to second-guess our own decisions.”

* * *

NICOLETTE WANDERED THE ROOM, TAKING A FLUTE OF
champagne, which she sipped. She thought of the difficulties in obtaining such goods in Santa Fe, and imagined how this would change with the coming of the railroad.

“
Mademoiselle.
”

Again, a voice from behind her, and Nicolette twirled to a greeting from the guest of honor. Schurz introduced her to an elderly couple as his “fellow European émigré,” to which she responded by commenting on the idea of a nation of immigrants.

“I believe the country is made stronger by its being a nation of immigrants, you from France, myself from Germany,” the former senator explained, slipping momentarily into his politician vest. “I believe that we immigrants can accomplish tremendous things for the development of this great composite nation of the new world, if in our works and deeds we combine and weld the best that is in the character of our original homelands with the best that is in the American character.”

“I agree, sir, though I remember little of the land across the sea,” Nicolette said. “I would have to say, sir, that here in New Mexico, we view things a little differently than you do in the East.”

“How is that?”

“The East, and by that I mean
both
North and South as they identified themselves in the late war, shares a common heritage in the same colonial power, and a common heritage in their fight for independence one hundred years ago. Here, we were part of a different empire, from which this territory was more recently removed, and many people still alive have memories of a culture quite different from the common civilization which is shared by all of those in the East. We all
still
feel like immigrants.”

“I had not thought of it from this perspective,” Schurz said thoughtfully.

“May I cut in,” Ezra Waldron said, entering the conversation.

“Of course,” the interior secretary said. “Sir, you are accompanied by a very bright young lady, here.
Mademoiselle
, I enjoyed our thoughtful chat.
Bonsoir
.”

“
Bonsoir
, sir,
Guten Abend
,” Nicolette replied, remembering to curtsy.

“You seemed to have impressed Mr. Schurz with your conversation,” Waldron said.

“We were speaking about this being a nation of immigrants, and how those of us in the territories all have the feeling of still being foreigners in America,” Nicolette explained. “I suppose that this will change as the railroad arrives.”

“Would you like to
see
it?”

“Pardon?”

“I would be honored to invite you to come down to see the railroad construction headquarters at Lamy,” Waldron offered. “It is but an hour or so by carriage, and I think that you might enjoy seeing our activities before the spur is actually completed into Santa Fe.”

“That would be most interesting, Mr. Waldron,” Nicolette said. “I would very much like to see the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe as a work in progress.”