The Fire of Greed (10 page)

Chapter 16

THE AIR SMELLED THICKLY OF THE IMMINENCE OF RAIN.

The towering thunderheads converged above like great, gray boulders, hewn by giants and assembled by titans into a citadel fit for primordial gods. The immense bulwark grew so high as to cover the sun itself. The stamina-sapping dry heat of mid-afternoon abruptly gave way to chill, as the breeze materialized out of nowhere and noisily rustled through the aspen leaves.

Lightning, trapped in the depths of the thunderheads, flashed as an eerie illumination, rather than as jagged rivulets of white-hot fire. The thunder followed almost immediately, blundering through the angry clouds like the sort of fusillade of cannon fire that had so terrified, yet so intrigued, a thirteen-year-old Bladen Cole as the volleys pounded Fredericksburg.

A skittering flock of birds exploded from a copse of aspen and recklessly careened through the air, briefly hugging near the earth before ascending into a sky filled with the scent that foretold rain.

Cole pushed his hat down low on his head to preserve its place from the gusts of wind.

Ahead lay the broad, northeasterly trending valley, which lay between the mountain ranges of the Sierra Gallinas and the Sierra Magdalena—which, in turn, paralleled the valley of the Rio Grande to the east.

Ahead rode the same men whom Cole had now followed for a week, together with their pair of recent captors—and their mules, who plodded ever onward, laden with the weight of gold.

Yesterday, a half hour after he parted company with the Dutchman, Cole had turned in his saddle to look back. He could see the location of the place on the ridgeline where they had spent the night, but, naturally, the Dutchman was gone. He was a half hour closer to the distant red rock canyon, and to that almost mythical place where the man named Dearing had passed from mundane reality into the pantheon of the legendary.

Descending from the mountain country, Cole watched the dense ponderosa forest give way to scattered groves of aspen. As he crossed the trail that linked Luera with Santa Rita, his view opened up, and he could see the jagged, blue edges of distant mountains on the far horizon. The chances of ambush had lessened as the vista broadened, and Cole had relaxed, allowing his mind a freer rein to wander. As so often on long rides through the vast openness of the West, he often rambled from thought to thought, conjuring random contemplations to fill the spaces in his consciousness that were opened wide by the openness and emptiness of the landscape itself.

The reflections that he rolled around in his head like pebbles between the fingers of a nervous man included all the motivations he had for
not
going with the Dutchman to Dearing's great treasury. Cole questioned his own decision to turn north, rather than to join the Dutchman in this venture. He questioned his single-minded determination to give up the possibility of riches, and to follow the two men whom he had signed on to capture, despite their having been captured by others.

He
had
given his word to the railroad men that he would see the task through. To fail to live up to his word would cast an impenetrable shadow across his reputation of being a man who did what he promised. The last thing he wanted was for these two men called Lynch and Muriday to have the reputation for being able to finish a job after Bladen Cole
gave up
on it.

Then too was the recollection of the young woman with the long dark hair, whose mother owned the dining place in Santa Fe. It would be nice to see her again, and to enjoy the candlelight sparkle in her eyes, and the smile on those lips the color of chilies.

Finally, there was the reason at the heart of all his reasons for riding north. It was not an immunity to greed for the Dutchman's gold that governed his momentum, but his unarticulated aversion to the ghosts of his past.

His compass took him north because to the south lay Silver City, and the source of memories of that night when the rat-faced man killed his brother Will.

* * *

“DAMNED CLOUDS LOOK LIKE RAIN,” GABE STANTON
observed, noting the obvious as the thunder rumbled across the mesquite-studded hills.

“Ain't you never been rained on before?” Ben Muriday snarled.

“Not with our hands tied to a damned saddle horn,” Jasper Gardner interjected.

“You got more to worry about when you get yourself brought to justice,” Muriday retorted.

“And you ain't never been on the wrong site of justice yourself?” Gardner taunted him. “When we get face-to-face with the sheriff back up there in Santa Fe, I'm gonna tell him he needs to wire around and look for warrants on your sorry hide.”

Oblivious to the lone rider who dogged their steps, the four men plodded ever northward. Despite his apparent cocksure self-confidence, Ben Muriday had been questioning his own sanity for the nearly two days since he had made the decision to make the change of direction in his life from treasure hunter to hand of justice.

Gardner was right, and Muriday questioned making this decision fraught with perils, not the least of which was a three– or four-day ride with two dangerous prisoners who might do anything to get away. He could only hope to get them to Santa Fe, collect the reward money, and get out of town before any of the buzzards of his past came to roost.

The dark sky grew suddenly darker, and the nose-curling smell of rain grew suddenly more pungent. Thunder so loud that it shook them in their saddles struck without the warning of lightning.

The horses whinnied and snorted.

On the dry ground, dark patches the size of thumbprints appeared—first a few, then many.

Wet splashes were felt on hands—first a few, then many.

Sharp splats were felt on hats—first a few, then many.

Suddenly, the trapdoor at the bottom of the thunderhead directly above fell open, and a great ocean dropped from heaven.

The landscape changed in an instant. Raging red torrents appeared in every gully. Visibility condensed from limitless to a few yards.

Simon Lynch, who was handling the three pack animals, lost control as they spooked at the abruptness of the deluge. The mules were tied together in a string, but they got tangled with one another, so he was able to grab a halter rope and recover them. In so doing, he had to dismount and became separated from his own saddle horse.

The two angry, stubborn mules each had an independent idea of which way to go, so Lynch found himself quite literally swimming though the downpour while tugging at these animals. Fortunately, he was able to see his horse, huddling against the base of a cliff not far away, and with great difficulty, he reached her and struggled back into a slippery saddle.

This accomplished, he looked around for the spare saddle horse, which they had packed with their supplies. It was nowhere to be seen—nor were Ben Muriday and the two captives.

* * *

WHEN THE DELUGE STRUCK, NO ONE HAD BEEN QUITE PREPARED
for its suddenness or its volume. muriday had
tied the horses ridden by Stanton and Gardner together, so they were not separated in the confusion, but he lost sight of them. His master plan, which even
he
had come to question, seemed to dissolve in the rain.

Unsure of what to do or where to go, he spurred his horse forward, in the direction that he thought they had been riding.

Stanton and Gardner had, as he had feared and expected, decided to seize the moment as an opportunity to escape, kicking their horses to run. However, without the use of their hands on the reins to provide unified direction, their two animals, tethered together, had quickly dragged each other from a near-gallop to a staggering near-standstill.

Glimpsing them getting away, but not realizing that they were in this predicament, the reckless Muriday impulsively drew his Colt and fired. The sound of his shot was swallowed into a thunderclap so loud that he thought his gun had misfired.

A moment later, he was close enough to see Stanton's horse rear up, and the man slide from a slippery saddle. As he struck the ground, Muriday was closer still and could see the blood.

“Damn you!” Jasper Gardner screamed angrily above the roar of the storm. “Damn you to
hell . . .
you just shot a defenseless man.”

Muriday could see the man, and the violent red stream that swirled around him, but his mind was filled only with the image of his own scheme falling apart.

Chapter 17

IN THE BIBLE IT IS TOLD OF A TIME WHEN IT RAINED FOR
forty days and forty nights.

In the desert, forty
minutes
can alter a landscape, creating a vast watershed of dangerous, fast-moving streams which render some trails impassible and others nonexistent.

Overhead, a brilliant sun in a deep blue dome was already drying the desert floor as rivers turned to trickles. Buzzards were already circling, looking for unfortunate vertebrates who had not weathered the brief but intense inundation.

Water still dripped from Simon Lynch's hat brim as he searched the hills and canyons for the missing pack horse. He thought of the supplies that were on that horse, provisions which they would need, provisions such as food. He thought of Muriday's anger if he reported back without those provisions.

Lynch scanned in vain, and in desperation, but the desperation and the scanning yielded no results. He guessed that the better part on an hour had slipped away before he reined his horse around and headed back toward where he had left Muriday and the captives.

At least he still had the pack mules, and all the gold. The irony was not lost on him that he had thousands of dollars in gold eagles, but the only food he had was a wad of hardtack in his saddlebag, which he had been chewing on when they mounted up that morning.

Lynch found the others dismounted near a streambed beneath a steep hillside. He had wondered for a moment whether he had lost them as well as the pack horse, but he had heard them before he saw them. Actually, he had heard Gardner's shouting voice. At first he thought the man was shouting for help, but as he neared, he could make out the surging volleys of violent expletives.

“Your damned partner done shot mine,” Jasper Gardner yelled to Lynch as he approached.

“He's gonna live, damn you,” Ben Muriday said with a mixture of anger and relief, as he finished tying a bandanna around Gabe Stanton's arm. “It's just a flesh wound. He's more banged up from falling off his horse.”

“Wouldn't never have fell off if you didn't shoot me,” Stanton muttered. “You didn't have no call to do that.”

“You were tryin' to get away,” Muriday pointed out. “You'd have stayed put, you wouldn't have this trouble. Now, let's get saddled up and get to gettin'.”

“Where's the damned pack horse?” Gardner asked as he looked at Lynch and the two mules.

“Run off,” Lynch explained. “Been lookin' all over.”

“That's all our food,” Gardner said.

“I know . . . but I been looking for an hour and can't see the damned thing anywhere. Might have got caught in a flash flood and knocked down. May be layin' out there somewhere waiting to die.”

“We gotta find our vittles,” Muriday said with the exasperation of a man whose plan was unraveling.

“We're only a day out of Bernalillo,” Lynch said hopefully. “We can make it until then . . . and we gots us plenty of them twenty-dollar eagles to
buy
us provisions for another day or so to Santa Fe.”

“You idiot,” Muriday said. “We can't ride into Bernalillo looking like this. We got two men tied down and one of 'em shot up and a load of coins that clanks as the damned mule walks. We can't go in there . . . There's gonna be questions enough in Santa Fe. We gotta stay wide of towns.”

“There's buzzards over yonder,” Stanton interrupted as he struggled to his feet. “Maybe that's our pack horse.”

“Okay, let's go take us a look,” Muriday said, staring at the distant birds as he helped Stanton back into the saddle.

The deviation from their intended route took them across a ridge that ran perpendicular to the steep slope near which they had dismounted.

As they came across and looked down at the focus of the scavengers' attention, four faces fell in disappointment. Instead of the body being the pack horse, it was merely a small black-tailed deer.

“This year's fawn by the looks of it,” Lynch said.

“Got some meat left on it,” Stanton observed.

“Not very damned much,” his partner added.

Indeed, by the time they got to the deer, the only viable cut left unscavenged was the hindquarters closest to the ground, and insects were already burrowing into this.

“Crap,” Muriday said in disgust, dropping the carcass and wiping his hand on his pants.

“What about
that
?” Lynch asked, pointing up to the hillside.

In a cleft that ran across the face of the cliff, about thirty feet above the point where it rose from the steep hillside, there was a series of buildings.

“Pueblos,” Gardner said. “Indian pueblos. Might be something up there. You suppose it's abandoned?”

There were cliff dwellings all across the Southwest—some that people knew about and others that were so far back in the hills that they were still turning up. When the Spaniards first came, there were people living in all of them, but now most of the smaller ones were empty. It was said that some of the people had been killed by the Spanish, or that they died of the fever. Other cliff dwellers had just moved on.

“If there's people up there, then they got corn or squash growing around here someplace,” Gardner said.

“I don't see no corn and squash,” Lynch said.

“Don't mean it ain't there,” Gardner retorted.

“Everybody wait down here by the bottom of the cliff while I figure out a way to get up there,” Muriday commanded.

Ten minutes later, he had found a narrow trail along a ledge, which was virtually invisible from below, and was making his way up to the ancient adobe structures.

There were about a half dozen separate buildings neatly tucked into the crevice, each with one or more windows, carefully constructed with hewn cottonwood lintels. As he got closer, he could see pottery scattered around in the shadows. If a cliff dwelling was abandoned, the pottery was mere piles of shards. These pots, the color of the sandstone and marked with designs painted in black, were intact. He could also now smell the smoke of a recent fire.

There were people here.

He was being watched.

Down below, the others saw Muriday pull his revolver as he neared the first building.

Unlike the Apache, the pueblo people had the reputation of being peaceful. Some of those living in the large clusters of pueblo cities between Bernalillo and Santa Fe traded actively with the Anglos, and had traded with the Spaniards before them, but the pueblo people were mainly farmers who sought only to go about their own business and be left alone. They did not raid Anglo ranches to steal horses or cause mischief as the Apache did, but they were known to fight back if pressed hard enough.

Ben Muriday was here today to press as hard as it took to get what he wanted.

Swallowing with difficulty, he stepped through the door.

An old woman seated on the floor near a fireplace on the opposite wall made no indication of a move toward or away from him. She merely turned her head slightly to stare into his eyes.

His first impression was that she was the oldest person he have ever seen in his life, and she may well have been.

Her expression was one of defiance. She obviously could not stop the intruder, but likewise she just sat there, wrapped in a threadbare blanket and an old shawl, wordlessly telling him that she was not going to run away. Pitiful as it was, this tiny room was her house, and she was staying to stare down the trespasser.

Muriday looked around quickly and saw no weapon, or anything of the provisions that he sought.

Without saying a word, Muriday stepped out and carefully approached the second building, which appeared to be connected to the next one. A ladder led to its roof, so not wanting to risk an ambush, Muriday stepped on its second rung and peered onto the roof, his Colt tightly gripped in his hand.

A flurry of movement almost made him squeeze the trigger.

It was likely that his regret for having needlessly shot Stanton saved the lives of two children of about three years of age.

They were huddled on the roof, clinging to each other and trembling mightily, with their dark eyes the size of the opening in the top of a nearby pottery jar. It gave him a weird sense of exhilaration to have such power that he could instill such terror in these children—especially after facing the intractable insolence of the old woman.

The first room that he entered in the larger building was empty, but the door led to another room.

This one had the cluttered look of a place where people lived. Indeed, pressed against the far wall were a half dozen people. There were two children, a bit older than the ones on the roof, and two women. They were both younger than the first woman, and one was much younger. She had long, dark hair, a finely featured face, and an ample bosom which was barely covered.

Had no one else been present, Muriday imagined the pleasure he would have taken at her expense.

In the front of the group were two men. One was clearly the elder of the group, though he was much younger than the old woman, and the other man was young and small, but with the hardened muscles of a man in his prime.

His eyes told Muriday without ambiguity that if no one else had been present, he would have wished to kill the white man with his bare hands.

“Look here,” Muriday said, lowering his gun slightly. “We don't mean to hurt nobody. We just fell on some hard luck losing our pack horse and our provisions. We just need us some vittles for a three-day ride up yonder.”

The little group merely stood and stared.

“Don't tell me
nobody
of your lot speaks English!”

Muriday repeated his request, this time accompanying it with gestures of pointing to his mouth, his stomach, and the distant horizon.

The people spoke among themselves, and soon there was a consensus that if they gave the white man the provisions he sought, the white man would go away and the nightmare would end.

The women went to work, gathering up some dried beans, some small bags of cornmeal, and even a fistful of dried chilies. This they packed into an old flour sack, which the younger woman handed to Muriday.

Having her body so close, and smelling her musky, sweet fragrance, was too much of a temptation. He reached out and touched her barely covered breast. Her garment fell away slightly, revealing her left breast in all its enchanting fullness.

As his hand closed to relish the touch of what his eyes beheld, he felt the sting of a hard and furious slap across the face.

Muriday turned to look in shock at the angry expression of the other woman, the woman who had hit him. She was probably the younger woman's mother.

He did the only thing he could think to do.

He raised his Colt and placed the muzzle directly on the center of her forehead.