The Fire of Greed

Bad move . . .

Cole circled along the rimrock above the adobe building so as to advance toward it from its blind side . . . He tethered his mount in the shade of cottonwoods.

He spun the cylinder of his Colt, more out of habit than useful purpose, and began walking up the slight incline toward Arroyo Blanco Gen'l Merchandise.

The bounty hunter was about fifty feet from the front door, approaching from the side, when he heard the enormous ruckus of a sudden argument. He was thirty feet from the door with his gun drawn when two disheveled murderers and a Mexican girl exploded through the door, each one shouting and screaming.

Cole leveled his sidearm and demanded, “Hands behind your necks . . . drop to your knees.”

There were whiskey-stained expressions of stunned disbelief, and one of the men impulsively went for his gun.

Praise for
Bladen Cole: Bounty Hunter

“Look for
Bladen Cole: Bounty Hunter
by the marvelous writer Bill Yenne . . . I predict that like me, you won't be able to wait to pick up the book. Once you do, you won't want to put it down. Unlike many Western adventures, Bladen doesn't have a sidekick or partner, but if he did, I would sure love to play that part!”

—Jerry Puffer, KSEN Radio

“The portrait Yenne draws of early Montana rings very true . . . Beneath Bladen Cole's leather hide beats a big heart that values justice, which is what makes him so likeable and fascinating. Yenne plays the women very well, too . . . they are strong characters, who seem very real in the context of their worlds.”

—Michael Castleman, author of the Ed Rosenberg mystery series

Berkley Western titles by Bill Yenne

BLADEN COLE: BOUNTY HUNTER

THE FIRE OF GREED

THE FIRE

OF GREED

A BLADEN COLE WESTERN

Bill Yenne

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

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A Penguin Random House Company

THE FIRE OF GREED

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2013 by Bill Yenne.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62633-7

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley mass-market edition / November 2013

Cover illustration by Cliff Nielsen.

Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Prologue

TWO HORSES, A BUCKSKIN AND A GRAY, WERE TIED TO THE
hitchrail in front of the low, pale ochre adobe building crouched at the edge of a cluster of cottonwoods. These trees, in and of themselves, constituted evidence of a spring, the presence of which explained the presence of the adobe building, across which was lettered the words
ARROYO BLANCO GEN'L MERCHANDISE
.

Half general store and half cantina, Arroyo Blanco Gen'l Merchandise was one of those oases of refreshment and sustenance that dotted the lonely wagon roads that crisscrossed the West. Situated in remote and forlorn places, usually near springs, they welcomed travelers as a place where a man could water his horse and usually find something a little stronger to satisfy his own thirst. They were places where a sojourner might buy provisions, graze stock, and find a relatively safe place to camp for the night.

The roan snorted with a sort of muttering half whinny as if to tell his rider that he smelled water—
and
he was very thirsty,
and
very ready to have himself some of that cool wetness dampening his parched throat,
and
he was envious of the two horses at the hitchrail who
had
partaken of that cool wetness.

Bladen Cole patted the roan's neck as if to say that he too could smell the water, and that he too yearned for his face to be submerged in a pool of icy rejuvenation. A slight tug of the reins told the roan that it would all be coming, but
only
in due time.

The roan coughed out another impatient, muttering half whinny as Cole took in the scene in the shallow valley below.

As much as Cole welcomed the sight of Arroyo Blanco Gen'l Merchandise for the promise of the coolness of refreshment, most of all he welcomed it for the sight of the two horses. The bounty hunter had been on this dusty, lightly traveled wagon road leading south from Durango, Colorado, for four days, and the sight of these two horses told him that this was the end of
his
road—or at least it was the climax of four days of boredom mixed with the apprehension that always comes as an integral part of a lonely pursuit.

He had seen those same two horses two days ago, tied to another hitchrail up in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Then, the cinches on the saddles had been tight, a clear sign of tense and edgy riders, who entertained the likelihood that there would be a need for a quick getaway.

Of course, few things will make a man more tense and high-strung than the knowledge that he is wanted by authorities who plan to string him high upon a gallows.

These two riders had good reason to be nervous, having left four men dead—two at the scene, and two more who died of their wounds the following day—in a botched robbery in Durango.

A warrant had been issued:
WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE.

There had been a great buzzing of angry bluster in Durango that night, but when it came to takers in the enterprise of bringing the perpetrators back “dead or alive,” the voices of the loudest blusterers faded like shadows into the night.

Shortly before that night lightened into the following dawn, there had been one taker, and he was on the trail.

Two days had brought the murderers to Pagosa Springs, still anxious that the law was on their tail.

Two more days had brought them to Arroyo Blanco Gen'l Merchandise, increasingly confident that they had gotten away clean. There was no telegraph line to Arroyo Blanco Gen'l Merchandise from Durango—or from anywhere.

Given that he had a choice, Cole had decided that he'd rather accost these riders in a place other than a crowded saloon in a crowded town like Pagosa Springs. He chose to wait patiently until the riders were no longer so wide-eyed in their vigilance as to be at the edge of careless jumpiness. Somebody could get hurt, and Cole was just selfish enough to not want it to be him.

It was obvious that after four days on the trail with no perceived hint of a posse in pursuit, the two men had relaxed. Cole could see this in the loosened cinches that allowed the hard-ridden horses some respite and a chance to relax as well.

Durango was four days behind them, and nothing lay ahead of these men but the 150-million-acre labyrinth of mountains and canyons that stretched from West Texas to the deadly Mojave of California. Out here, lawlessness was a way of life. Across the length and breadth of the territories of New Mexico and Arizona, civilization by the standards of the East, or even of Denver, existed only in a scattering of islands set in a turbulent sea.

Lincoln County, which comprised most of southeastern New Mexico, was the case in point that was often discussed as the “way things are out here.”

The county had been little more than a running gunfight for about the past two years, as cattleman John Chisum and his cowboys rose up in insurrection against the Murphy-Dolan gang that had been running the place like a private kingdom. Both factions defied all efforts at the importation of law and order from any quarter. As the bodies piled up on each side, the best that Lew Wallace, the former general and now the territorial governor, could do, was declare a general amnesty in a desperate attempt to halt the Lincoln County War.

Yet Lincoln County, with its cattle industry, was the essence of civilization by comparison to the wild mountainous wilderness
west
of the Rio Grande, where Geronimo and the Chiricahua Apache were the only form of civilization, and where outsiders, even if well armed, treaded only at their peril.

If a man was so inclined, he could lose himself forever in these 150 million acres which the legal system had timidly ignored, or linger long enough to reinvent himself and move on to the new horizons of California. These two men, who had departed Durango under a tempestuous cloud, were men who were so inclined.

Cole circled along the rimrock above the adobe building to its southern approach, so as to advance toward it from its blind side. Keeping an eye on the human watering hole, he watered the roan in the stream that flowed downhill from the spring, loosened the saddle cinch, and tethered his mount in the shade of some cottonwoods.

He spun the cylinder of his Colt, more out of habit than useful purpose, and began walking up the slight incline toward Arroyo Blanco Gen'l Merchandise.

The bounty hunter was about fifty feet from the front door, approaching from the side, when he heard the enormous ruckus of a sudden argument. He was thirty feet from the door with his gun drawn when two disheveled murderers and a Mexican girl exploded through the door, each one shouting and screaming.

Cole leveled his sidearm and demanded, “Hands behind your necks . . . drop to your knees.”

There were whiskey-stained expressions of stunned disbelief, and one of the men impulsively went for his gun.