The Fire of Greed (13 page)

Chapter 22

“I THOUGHT WE WERE KEEPIN' FAR ENOUGH AWAY FROM
the Rio Grande that we wouldn't run across nobody,” Simon Lynch said in disgust as they looked down at the trading post. “Thought you said we was comin' up through the middle of nowhere by stayin' this far west of the river.”

By the early afternoon of the day following the pummeling of Jasper Gardner at the house with one blue wall, the tattered group had reached a small outpost that lay near a ford across one of the eastward flowing tributaries of the Rio Grande.

“It figures they'd have a place like that at a ford,” Ben Muriday observed, thoughtfully chewing a wad of tobacco. “Besides, I ain't never been this far north in the territory any more than you ever been this far north. How am I supposed to know everything?”

“Don't need no ford in late summer,” Lynch pointed out, conceding that neither of them knew much about the lay of the land in northern New Mexico. “We can cross anywheres.”

“You need provisioning, 'less you gonna be starving us to death,” Gabe Stanton complained.

“Shut up, you,” Muriday demanded. “Shut your damn mouth. I have half a mind to let you starve . . . but you ain't gonna starve to death just on account of you came up short of breakfast. Besides, we're gonna be in Santa Fe by suppertime tomorrow. Then you can eat your hearts out courtesy of somebody else than us.”

“Bastard didn't steal enough from those damned Indians,” Jasper Gardner interjected, his voice still nasal from his damaged nose. “What we gonna eat for supper
tonight
if we don't go down there and buy us some grub?”

“Shut your damned mouth,” a frustrated Muriday demanded.

“I says one of us goes down yonder, and the rest goes and fords upstream somewhere,” Lynch suggested.

“All right,” Muriday said after taking a minute or two to think over his options. “I'll go down and get us enough salt pork to get us through till tomorrow when we're rid of these two. You go on upstream and get 'em across. I'll meet up with you a mile due north by that chalk-colored cliff up yonder.”

* * *

LASHING HIS HORSE TO THE HITCHRAIL, BEN MURIDAY
stepped past, or over, several children, who were playing or doing odd jobs around the front of the main building, and made for the door.

In the coolness of the interior, he could see a long counter and, beyond it, ranks of well-stocked shelves. As he glanced around in the interest of being aware of his surroundings, his eyes took stock of a pair of young half-breed men who looked like ranch hands. They were sitting at a table with a bottle of something brown.

A plump young woman with dark eyes and freckles across her nose greeted him from behind the counter. She was dressed modestly, in the style of the Latter-Day Saints, and had her dark hair tied in a knot atop her head.

“May I help you, sir?” she said with practiced efficiency.

“I'll be having me some salt pork and some beans, enough for four . . . days . . . on the trail,” Muriday said, catching himself before revealing that
four
men needed provisioning for
one
day.

“Yes, sir, I'll get that together for you at once,” the woman said with a smile.

“You wouldn't be needing some tack, would you, friend?” an older man, with a long, unkempt gray beard, said, getting out of a rocking chair in the corner of the room.

“Don't reckon,” Ben Muriday told John Jacob Smith.

For near to forty years, John Jacob Smith had operated his strategically located trading post here at this ford, catering to the citizens of nearby pueblo cities, as well as the increasing numbers of Anglo travelers who passed this way. He had made a good livelihood for himself and for his large family by catering both to the needs and to the wants of his patrons, and by having a unique knack for closing sales of the latter.

“Got us a special going on bridles,” Smith suggested, moving in to interest his customer in doing more shopping than that for which he had planned. Smith had not been successful out here by allowing customers to walk out with pockets full of cash. “I can set you up with a real fine hackamore with some real attractive braiding done by a feller up in Colorado.”

“No, I don't think I'll be needing—”

“Sometimes, ain't so much what a man needs, but what he might
want
to have. I can show you while Molly gets your purchases together.”

“No, sir. As much as I appreciate you taking an interest, all I need's the grub.”

“Shot of something to ease the cares of the day, then,” Smith suggested.

“Well . . . I reckon.”

As a member of the Latter-Day Saints, who were not, by nature, given to taste liquor, Smith did not imbibe himself. However, as a merchant whose reputation was that of full service to his customers, Smith was happy to provide what those customers sought, and even to suggest when it might be needed.

Grinning broadly, the bearded man poured two fingers from a bottle that he took from behind the bar. Muriday could also see a grin on the face of the round young woman, who he took to be the man's half-breed daughter.

“
Ooo-ee
,” Muriday said with a wince as the whiskey touched his tongue. “Ain't often had whiskey that's cut so little as this.”

“Pride ourselves on a happy customer,” Smith said.

Preparing himself for his second sip, Muriday relished the flavor and fiery feel of the bourbon as it rolled down his throat.

“Pour you another?”

“Just one,” Muriday replied, indicating that he
would
have another, but only one finger this time.

“Can I set you up with a fresh bottle for those lonesome nights out on the trail?” Smith offered.

“No, sir,” Muriday said, reaching in his pocket for some cash. “'Tis just enough to have that taste in my memory . . . Thanks a lot, though.”

“Fresh eagles,” the proprietor said, examining the newly minted coins that sparkled on the counter. “You musta had a payday recently.”

“Got me a bigger one comin' up,” Muriday replied, feeling a bit unsteady on his feet. For a man unused to full-strength bourbon, three fingers was enough to round off a lot of the hard edges on his daily concerns.

It was also enough to make him unaware of the attention directed toward him by the two men at the nearby table. The mention of the freshness of his twenty-dollar eagles
caught
their attention, and the reference to a bigger payday coming
kept
it.

They waited until Muriday had collected a ten-dollar gold piece as change from his purchases and ridden off before they corked their bottle and made for their own horses.

* * *

THE SUN HAD BEEN DOWN FOR AN HOUR BEFORE MURIDAY
and Lynch dragged their captives off their horses to make their camp and eat the Saints' salt pork.

“Suppose you can keep yourself awake long enough to take first watch?” Lynch asked crossly as Muriday stretched out with bourbon on his mind, his head on his saddle, and his belly full of salt pork. “Didn't think so. This'll be the last time I let you go for provisions and come back half-drunk. Least you could have brung the rest of the bottle back to share.”

“Shut yourself up,” Muriday shot back. “Tomorrow we's gonna be living high in Santa Fe and you can drink yourself silly if you wanna.”

At that, Lynch shook his head in disgust and walked away as Muriday began to snore.

“We gotta get out of here tonight,” Gardner whispered to Stanton when Lynch was out of earshot.

“You gonna wake me up and give me a chance like you
didn't
the other night?” Stanton responded in an angry hiss. “I don't trust you no little bit since you done run off without me.”

Though Stanton's arm was still a bit stiff, and Gardner's nasal passages were still painful, the two men were gradually recovering from the pain of the injuries they had suffered over the preceding few days. They were certainly sufficiently mended to be anxious to make a success of their last nighttime escape opportunity before they were delivered to an uncertain future in Santa Fe.

“Like I told you yesterday,” Gardner explained, “I
woulda
come back for you soon as I got a gun.”

“That's crap.”

“You can think that if you want . . .”

“You know damned well if there was two of us, you wouldn't have got yourself knocked on the ground by that
woman
.”

“She had a damned bird gun,” Muriday explained. “You can't just walk up to nobody that's got a bird gun. You gotta outsmart 'em.”

“You consider
yourself
a smart one?”

“Shut up and let's figure this thing. Gonna be in Santa Fe tomorrow. We gotta get out of here tonight. We got one of 'em out cold. If we take the other one, we can make for the horses.”

“How we gonna do that with our feet all tied up?” Lynch asked.

“Same as I did the other night. Pull your feet up and get to workin' on the knot tyin' your ankles together. You can't get to your wrists, but you sure as hell
can
get your ankles undid.”

“How we gonna clobber him with our hands tied?”

“If we both get on him, one of us can choke him with tied hands.”

“What do we do if Muriday wakes up?”

“Quit askin' questions. You got a better idea?”

Chapter 23

“WHO'S THERE?”

“Damn it . . . who the hell?”

K'pow. K'pow.

“Don't hit the ones who's tied up.”

K'pow.

“Damn you, Muriday, shoot him!”

K'pow.

Bladen Cole awoke suddenly to the sound of gunfire and an angry crowd of shouting men in the arroyo beneath his campsite.

He had drifted to sleep with the quiet of a starry desert night, with the twinkling lights of Santa Fe in the far, far distance, and with the anxiety of knowing that no more sleeps intervened between this night and the day of finality and reckoning.

K'pow. K'pow.

Below him now the camp of the four men was a swirling nest of activity. At its center, half-standing and half-crouched, was Simon Lynch with his Winchester in his hands. The gray smoke from the smoldering campfire mixed with the bluish smoke of burnt gunpowder.

K'pow. K'pow. K'pow.

The two captives, one of them with his feet unbound, lay nearby, wriggling like awkward serpents as they tried to hug the ground to stay out of what were apparently several lines of fire.

Cole could see two other men, the same two Indians who he had seen ride out from the trading post the previous afternoon. They were on an gravel slope opposite Cole's position and attempting to crawl upward toward the campsite.

From what he could see in the moonlight, and by what was left of the campfire, Cole surmised that the two men had intended an ambush, but Lynch had heard them as they tried unsuccessfully to get across the gravel without making any noise.

K'pow.

One of them had risen to a crouch and fired at Lynch with his pistol.

He missed.

K'pow. K'pow. K'pow.

Lynch replied with three shots in rapid succession, also without hitting anyone.

“Damn you, Muriday . . . where the hell you at?” Lynch called, as he slotted more cartridges into his rifle.

At first, Cole did not see him, but at last he spotted the red and white striped shirt. Muriday was standing, naked from his waist to his ankles, beneath a scrub cottonwood near the picket line where the horses were tied. When the attack had started, he was caught, literally with his pants down, answering the call of nature. In so doing, he had also left himself naked of his firearms, and impotent in his being able to shoot back to aid Lynch.

After four days of riding and pondering how it would finally happen, Cole knew that it was time for him to make his presence known.

He did not relish the prospect of killing the two young fellows who were attempting to ambush the foursome. If they kept up the practices which had led them to this juncture, they were doomed not to be long for this earth, but he did not welcome for himself the role of being the agent of this inevitability.

K'pow. K'pow.

In the case of one of the young men, this fate was nearer than Cole could have imagined.

K'pow.

The man had risen to fire his gun and caught a .45 round to his forehead from Simon Lynch's Winchester.

K'pow.

Showered by the bloody mess that spurted from this lucky hit, the other man had stood, fired one last time, turned, and run, plunging down the talus slope and disappearing into the darkness.

Under cover of this unfolding commotion, Bladen Cole had, by now, approached to within thirty feet of Simon Lynch.

“Drop the rifle,” Cole demanded.

Lynch turned, the muzzle of his gun at a downward angle. He stared straight at Cole, looking him directly in the eyes.

It was one of those moments that seems to go on and on, but which actually goes by in the twinkling of an eye, as the two men stared at each other.

Lynch had no idea that he was staring at a man who had been looking at him from afar for more than a week. Cole, for the first time in all those days, could see the face of the man whom he had come to know only as a distant stick figure.

At last, Lynch opened his mouth as though to say something, but he did not. He coughed slightly as blood belched up from his innards and dribbled from his lips.

Lynch too, had been hit, suffering a painfully mortal wound that left him in the cold cocoon of shock.

As he fell forward, Cole turned his eyes into the darkness, looking for Muriday.

Lynch's partner had by now approached almost to the campfire, his pants pulled up, hoping to grab a gun and aid in the common cause, but he now realized that this cause was hopeless. Without a gun, he was virtually out of options.

As had been the case with Lynch a moment earlier, Cole was now face-to-face with Ben Muriday, a man whom he had seen previously only from a distance.

Yes, Cole was now seeing Muriday for the first time face-to-face.

A face.

The
face.

That face!

A cold chill came over Bladen Cole as he stared with disbelief.

It was a chinless face with close-spaced eyes, a long nose, and a sparse, unkempt mustache. It was the ugly, haunting visage that had tormented his dreams and seasoned his nightmares since that terrible night in Silver City.

Ben Muriday was the rat-faced man who had killed his brother.

For a decade of his life, he had thought about this moment and how he would finally
kill
the man who had shot Will down that night.

Now that moment was suddenly upon him, arriving with no warning.

The two men stared at each other in one of those moments that seem to go on and on, but which actually go by in the twinkling of an eye.

Cole was paralyzed—not from fear, or indecision, but from shock.

Ben Muriday had no memory of Bladen Cole. He saw only a man who held a gun when he had none.

He turned and ran.

Cole did not realize until he raised the rifle to his shoulder and gazed through the sights that his hands were trembling. He could not remember the last time that his hands had trembled. He found himself awash in a downpour of emotion and adrenaline not unlike the explosive thunderstorms of the past days.

Muriday was halfway to the picket line when Cole squeezed off a shot.

K'pow!

He missed.

K'pow!

He had run after the man, pausing to aim and fire a second time just as Muriday leapt on a horse and took off riding bareback.

Cole fired a third time, taking a shot that would have been nearly impossible under the best of circumstances.

K'pow!

Suddenly, a shot rang out from behind him.

He turned to see one of the prisoners trying to aim Lynch's Winchester with his hands still bound together.

K'pow!

Cole put a round into the dirt about eighteen inches from the man's head, and he dropped the gun.