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
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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.
Contents
Excerpt
Berkley Western titles by Bill Yenne
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
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.
Chapter 1
“FINE DAY, SEÑOR DOCTOR,” THE YOUNG MAN IN THE VIRTUALLY SPOTLESS WHITE SHIRT SAID WITH A SMILE, AS HE entered the low-ceilinged adobe building a short distance from the Plaza in the center of Santa Fe.
“That it is, lad,” said the older man with his boots resting comfortably on his desk. “That it is. I ’spect we’ll be getting a bit of heat this afternoon, though.”
“Sí, señor doctor, I ’spect you are right.”
“Let me compliment you on your rapidly expanding English skills,” the older man said.
“Muchas gracias . . . um . . . Thank you very much, señor doctor.”
As the teenager took out a broom and began sweeping the office of the coroner of New Mexico’s territorial capital, Amos Richardson turned his attention back to the pages of the Santa Fe New Mexican, the newspaper that rightfully boasted of being the oldest English-language daily between the Mississippi River and the Pacific coast.
Today, as for most days the past year, the news was dominated by the coming of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Building westward from Atchison, Kansas, the road had put “Santa Fe” in its name as a goal, but it had taken a dozen years and a full-blown war of intrigue, chicanery, and bloodshed against the rival Denver & Rio Grande Western up in Colorado in order for it finally to come close to its namesake.
It was 1880, and the great tide of civilization was stretching its tendrils far into the West, and these were the steel tendrils of the railroads. By now, the westward spread of that tide had more or less tamed places such as Denver and Cheyenne, linking them to Chicago or Omaha by a matter of days, rather than weeks or months.
Now it was the turn of Santa Fe to be joined to the nation by these arteries of steel. When Richardson had first come to New Mexico Territory on the Santa Fe Trail, it took around two months for a wagon train to get out here from Kansas City. With the railroad, the same trip could be completed in a few days.
Ironically, for reasons best understood by the civil engineers who surveyed the route, the railroad didn’t actually pass through Santa Fe, but through the town of Lamy, a dozen miles south. However, even as the branch line into the city was still being built, Santa Fe was starting to feel the full effect of its connection to the rest of the country.
“Domingo, the railroad will change everything,” the coroner said with a burst of civic pride.
“Sí, doctor.” The boy smiled. The blank look in his cheerful eyes revealed that he had no idea what Richardson meant. In all his life, he had not been farther than a day’s ride from where he now stood. Nor had he ever seen a railroad or a locomotive, except as a line illustration in the pages of the Santa Fe New Mexican. Nevertheless, he knew that the railroad was something that pleased his boss, so it was something that pleased him as well.
Amos Richardson took pride in his adopted city. He had long been one of Santa Fe’s prominent men, a far cry from the refugee he had been when he arrived after the war. A military man who had served in a losing army, he had left a place where he knew he had no future to seek a fresh future in the ambiguous West, a place whose vastness promised much, but almost always delivered on the promise of a fresh start.
Richardson had found his own fresh start here in this long-established island of civilization at the intersection of the Santa Fe Trail and the old Spanish trail coming north from Mexico. Santa Fe was already the capital of Nuevo Mexico when the Pilgrims were still struggling in the wilderness in what was not yet Massachusetts. By its nature as a crossroads with a history stretching back for a quarter of a millennium, Santa Fe had always been a city of immigrants and drifters. Some came as wanderers and continued their wandering. Some came as wanderers and stayed on. Dr. Amos Richardson came, and he stayed.
The turnover in doctors provided opportunities, but irregular income. The turnover in coroners provided a dependable income, and a place of prominence in the political hierarchy of the city and the territory. The onetime refugee physician was now the sort of prominent citizen who could honestly welcome
a connection to the nation that had defeated his own nation in the war.
He was no stranger to the inner circle, and occasionally the poker table, of Governor Lew Wallace, who had worn general’s stars and a blue uniform at the same time that Richardson was wearing gray. Such was the nature of the melting pot of dissolved past affiliations that was Santa Fe.
“Dr. Richardson, señor.” Domingo interrupted, stepping into his boss’s office. “There’s a gringo. . . umm. . . a man who wants to see you.”
Richardson glanced out the window. He could make out a rider on horseback. He made a mental note to have Domingo fetch a pail of water and wash the windows.
He rose from his chair and stepped out onto the street.
“You must be the coroner,” the stranger asserted.
“You would be correct in that assumption, sir,” Richardson replied, both refreshed and taken aback by the man’s directness. This man’s eyes were alert and piercing, but otherwise, his appearance was that of a disheveled vagabond who had seen neither razor nor bathwater in a week.
“I’ve got a couple of customers for you,” the man explained, nodding to the two horses he led. The clouds of flies that swarmed about the bundle tied to each of the saddles told the coroner that the contents of the canvas-wrapped parcels had once been animate.
“Domingo, could you lend a hand?” Richardson said, stepping close to inspect the stranger’s cargo.
The man dismounted, secured the horses to the nearest hitchrail, and helped Richardson and his assistant carry the bodies inside to the coroner’s workroom.
“Domingo, you’d better go for some ice,” Richardson said as he directed the stranger to help him place one of the parcels on a specialized table that had obviously been the interim resting place for innumerable such objects before.
Richardson gave a cursory glance at the bullet wound to the chest, and probed it with a long, shiny metal tool.
“Won’t need an autopsy to determine cause of death,” the coroner said casually. “How did you come to be in possession of Mr. Doe here?”