Río Chama, page 15
“I’ve changed.”
“No, men like you, men like me, we don’t change. We can’t change.”
“We have to change. Sometimes.”
“You got an obsession, pard.”
“They’re my obsessions.”
“Yeah, but they are affecting a lot of people. And I don’t mean me. Nor Stew, God rest his soul. But there’s Fenella.”
“I didn’t want her in this. I didn’t want you, Clint. This was something I wanted to do alone. And I’ll do it alone, if I have to.”
Paden exhaled. “Well, that’s the Britton Wade I knew. Stubborn. Don’t care beans about nobody. Forgetting that if you was doing this alone, you’d be dead in that churchyard in Santa Cruz, or dead back yonder at The Wall of Many Voices, dead somewhere.”
Wade opened the Dickens novel, shut it, pulled out the map, pointed.
“A half day’s ride from here, we’ll leave the river, climb out of the cañon, move into the timber country.”
“To take young Cole to Tierra Amarilla?”
“No.”
“Then Chama. It don’t make a damned bit of difference. Even if you get the boy behind bars, his daddy’ll just break him out or buy him out. You’d be doing all this for nothing. I’d hate to think that poor Stew got killed, for nothing.”
“You never liked Stew.”
Paden ignored that. “Map or no map, it strikes me that we’d be better off just taking the kid on through the cañon, turn him over to his daddy.”
“And his daddy would kill you as quickly as those Apache boys wanted to.”
“I think we could negotiate some sort of truce. After all, Jeremiah himself said his pa would pay us a right smart reward if we was to bring him home.”
“No.”
Paden straightened. “You understand how this is gonna turn out, don’t you, pard? You and me? I been holding back like all wrath, Brit. Stew wanted to put a bullet in you for a long, long time. I’d rather our partnership not go up the flume.”
Wade rose, hooked his thumbs on his gun belt, waited.
Paden was looking away, into the cave, shaking his head. “That girl, Fenella, I could buy her some fancy dresses, some pearls, buy her a nice home in some city.”
“She wouldn’t have a thing to do with you,” Wade said, “or Roman Cole’s money.”
Paden looked back, harder, talking a half step for Wade. “No, you ain’t changed. I see the same contrary lawman who’d track me across the Black Range, bend a pistol barrel over my head, haul me back to a town where he knew I wouldn’t stand a chance in a court of law, let ’em convict me, and ship me to the territorial prison.”
Fenella had stepped out of the cave, watching, silent.
“You’re bound and determined to bring in yet another kid.” Paden hadn’t noticed Fenella’s presence. “Take him all the way to T.A., only this one’s to hang. You got no soul, Brit.”
“He killed a man,” Wade said.
“So he killed a man. So have I. So have you.”
“He was a priest!” Wade coughed, angry at himself, hating himself, coughing savagely, until he dropped to his knees, feeling Fenella come to him, feeling her hands on his shoulders, but he pushed her away, climbed to his feet, one hand on the butt of the .44, the other coming to his mouth, wiping saliva, blood.
“A priest,” Wade repeated, and shook his head. “You want to know why I’m doing this, Clint?”
Paden stood before him, a blur. Wade tried to clear his vision. He sat down on the boulder, picked up the book and map, shoved them into the Gladstone. “I have to do it!”
He stood again, spitting out words, hating himself for revealing everything, not hearing what he said, but remembering Clint Paden’s words: You got no soul.
“A priest. I was going to be a priest, Clint. That’s right. You’re looking at an altar boy, grew up in Baltimore, grew up in a Catholic family, the pride and joy. Father Britton Wade. That was my destiny. I could speak Latin, knew the Bible, the saints, knew everyone in our parish, knew the Blessed Virgin as if I had been on Calvary myself at the Crucifixion. But then I get this damned cough, and it won’t go away, so I visit some pill-roller, and he gives me the news. Tells me I’m a dead man. Consumption. Says I should get out of the cities, maybe head West, says that might buy me a few more years. Says I’ll certainly be dead in five years if I didn’t get to that desert climate. Says I’ll probably be dead in ten no matter what I do.
“And what did Father Britton Wade, good Catholic, loving child of God, do? Hell, I rejected God, told him to go to hell. Cursed him, hated him, for giving me these lungs. I spit on everything I’d grown up believing, broke my mother’s heart, damned near killed my father . . . probably did kill him. I wouldn’t know. Haven’t written my family since I came out West, came out hating everything.
“But I fooled that sawbones in Baltimore. Oh, at first I tried to help myself, went to some sanitarium, where they’d have me bent over a metal rod like I was a blanket hanging over a clothesline. Draining my lungs. Hell, the things some people believe. Like believing that a man named Jesus could rise from the dead. Like believing that someone turned water into wine. Like believing those stories about Moses, Babel, Ruth, Solomon, David, and Paul’s change of heart.
“Well, I am a miracle. Sixteen years later, I’m still kicking. That’s God’s mercy for you. That’s God’s joke. A joke on me, and it’s been a damned fine one.” He was looking at the sky, laughing. “I kept waiting for someone to kill me. A bullet’s quicker than this.” He tapped his chest. “Those two men in Chloride couldn’t do it. Those Apaches couldn’t. I’m blessed. I’m cursed.
“But it all struck me in Chama. In jail. I watched that sheriff, Roman Cole’s man, beat up a priest, and I saw me beating up my priest from Baltimore. I saw me for the godless bastard I’d been for sixteen years. And I know I don’t have much longer, know I haven’t been a man. Yeah, I’ve changed. I had to change. I had to make Britton Wade stand for something. I’d been running from myself, but my past caught up. You can’t run from God. That’s why I’m here, Clint. It has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with justice. It’s about salvation. My salvation.
“But you wouldn’t know or care about that, would you, Clint? All right. That’s my story. So, if you want to make your play, you want to take Jeremiah Cole in to his father, well, let’s fill our hands. You’d best remember this, Clint. I’m the Lord’s avenging angel. You can’t kill me. But, as God is my witness, I surely will kill you.”
Chapter Nineteen
“You shouldn’t get your dander up, pard.” Paden’s words came out more as a whistle. The gunman bit his lower lip, exhaled heavily, and turned away.
Tense, wound so tight he thought he might explode, Wade sat, practically collapsed, staring, waiting, watching as Fenella walked slowly away from him, back toward Paden. His chest heaved as he struggled for breath, his heart pounded against his ribs, almost hurting.
The wind blew, and, somewhere in the distance, coyotes sang their song. He was alone. He’d always been alone. Slowly his heartbeat lessened, and he could breathe again. I’d kill for a shot of whiskey, he thought, but opened his Gladstone again, looked at the books, reached for The Man in the Iron Mask, but his hand wouldn’t co-operate, and he felt himself withdrawing Father Marcelino Eusebio de Quesada y Azcárranga’s Bible, instead. He opened the book, looked down, let his eyes fall on some random passage.
“And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.”
He kept reading, and read until it was dark.
* * * * *
They rode in silence.
Wade hadn’t even shaved that morning, although he had made a futile attempt until the remnants of his shaving soap crumbled in his hand. Crumbled, he thought, like my life, and he pitched soap, razor, and brush into the river.
The walls of Mesa de las Viejas loomed over them until they reached the confluence of Río Cebolla, more creek than river, where Britton Wade led the group away from the Chama, out of the cañon, turning east, eventually climbing from the banks of the small stream, and into the timber. There, Wade stopped, letting the horses rest, while he fished out Father Amado’s map from the grip fastened behind the cantle.
He was studying the piece of parchment when Clint Paden nudged the sorrel up alongside him.
“You speaking to me, pard?” Paden asked. “Or you still riled?”
“What do you want?” He kept all emotion from his voice, neither mad nor hospitable, and tried to focus on the map while keeping his right hand near his revolver.
“Where’s that map taking us?”
“A church.” Folding the map with one hand, Wade looked into the dense forest of pine. The air felt crisp, clean.
“A church?”
Wade looked over his shoulder at the man who had spoken. Jeremiah Cole nervously wet his lips. He hadn’t noticed how sunburned the boy was, riding hatless all these days, his hair matted, dirty, his nose so red it had to hurt like hell. Yet Cole never once complained, never asked for a hat or help. He’d give the kid credit for that.
“We should call this the Trail of Many Churches.” Paden laughed at his own joke. That was Clint Paden for you. Always trying out some gag. Couldn’t help himself, and Wade wanted to like the young man, wanted to be able to trust him, but knew he couldn’t, not completely. “Would this be Father Amado’s church? The padre who drawed you this map?”
Wade kept studying Cole. “No,” he said. “Amado’s parish is in Parkview. But that’s where we’re headed.” He had decided to confess, to take a chance on Paden. Hell, hadn’t he blabbed his whole damned life story last evening? Might as well tell everything. “It’ll take us another day or two to get there. They’ll expect us to bring him”—he jutted out his jaw toward Cole—“to the jail in T.A. or Chama. But that would be the same as cutting the boy loose. That’s why Father Amado suggested that we hold him at the Parkview church. Keep him there for the night. Or as long as needed.”
“Sort of like asking for sanctuary again,” Paden said.
“Something like that. Nobody would expect to find Cole there. Anyway, that’s what Father Amado thought. Keep him there, then haul him in the back of a wagon of hay up the road to T.A. on the day of the execution. Take him right to the gallows awaiting him. The gallows they thought they’d never use.”
“And hang him,” Paden said.
“And hang him,” Wade repeated.
“For a hundred and fifty dollars?” Randy said with contempt.
“Shut up, Randy. Brit and I are talking here.”
The wind blew harder. Wade looked up. He remembered the pine forests outside of Baltimore, how when the wind blew like this, the swaying treetops sounded like gently falling rain. He kept remembering a lot of things lately.
“A church . . .” This time, the words came from Fenella Magauran, who looked equally disturbed. Wade traced a finger along the map, found the church Father Amado had marked on a woods trail, just a triangle with a cross on top, marked Los Pinos, and a warning describing the area surrounding the church.
Bosque. COLE! ¡Tenga Cuidado!
He hadn’t studied this part of the map much, had been examining, visualizing the trail as he traveled it. The truth of the matter was he never really thought he’d make it this far.
Another symbol had been drawn due north of the church. A star. No. Too many points. He knew then. Sawmill.
Senator Roman Cole owned two sawmills in the valley, the Cole Lumber Company farther north, over toward the Brazos Peaks, and the smaller one, El Aserradero Pequeño de Los Pinos.
“Let’s ride.” Wade nudged the buckskin forward. “But we might have to muzzle our horses. This is Roman Cole’s country. Keep it quiet. We’ll rest at the church down this road.”
Randy cursed, told Jeremiah Cole to get moving or he’d blow his head off with the Greener. They rode into the timbers, and Wade let the darkness, and the scent of pine, envelope him.
* * * * *
There wasn’t much to the settlement in the clearing below the hill they had crested: a makeshift, circular corral used to thresh grain, a few small log buildings, and a similar number of jacales, three or four privies, a lean-to, root cellar, two wells, the beehive-shaped oven called a horno, and a rugged building of adobe, rectangular, with a cross atop a crumbling steeple and bell tower. A cottonwood tree stood in the center of the settlement, the only thing living Wade could see.
Before Wade, on the hilltop, stood a large black cross, crudely but somehow beautifully decorated with bent nails. More crosses leaned in front of the adobe church. He knew where he was, knew what he was seeing, knew the hill on which they rested must be El Calvario.
“This is about as dead a place as I reckon I’ve ever seen,” Paden said. “You see anyone?”
Wade’s head shook.
“What is this place?”
Wade pointed to the church. “They call that a morada. A meeting house.”
“Who’d meet there? Ghosts?”
“Los Hermanos de Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno.”
“Reckon I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“Brothers of Light,” Wade said. “Penitentes.”
Paden thought a moment, his head finally jerking up and down. “Ain’t ’em the fellas that whip ’emselves for punishment? To please God?”
“Something like that.”
“Some dude down in Eddy told me they sacrificed virgins, too. He called ’em devil worshipers.”
“I wouldn’t believe anything a man in Eddy told me.”
Paden grinned. “I reckon that’s the gospel truth, pard. But I’m betting that Parkview priest didn’t collect no money for that reward he’s offering us from these folks. This place looks as poor as a prison.” He clucked his tongue. “Penitentes,” he said, testing the word.
Fenella spoke up. “There are no Penitentes here.” She looked back at Cole, whose sunburned face had turned ashen. “There is no one here. Not anymore.”
He knew then, and Wade silently cursed Father Amado for bringing him here, with Jeremiah Cole, with the Irish woman—although Amado could not have foreseen that Fenella would be with them, probably didn’t know who Fenella was—drawing him a map that would take him to the place where Jeremiah Cole had murdered Father Vasco. He looked at the cottonwood, tried to picture the Mexican priest kicking himself to death, hanging from the big limbs, then, even quicker, tried not to imagine such a scene. He turned back toward the redhead.
“My understanding of the Penitentes,” he said, “is that they served where there were no priests. Laymen of the church, working in the country far from the churches.”
Her long hair blew in the wind, and she nodded. “Yes, but this has not been a morada for some time. Father Vasco came to assist those who had to work at Roman Cole’s lumber mill, the mill he stole from the poor Mexicans, as he stole from everyone. Father Vasco fixed up this church. He . . .” She looked down the hill. “He is buried in the campo santo cemetery.”
They were moving down the hill, easily but with caution.
“How far to the sawmill?” Wade asked.
“Three miles,” Fenella replied. “Maybe four. But do not worry. No one comes here since . . .”
“What brought you here?” Paden asked. “Didn’t I hear the kid here say that you worked in Chama?”
“I moved here for a man,” she said. “My husband, but he proved to be a swine. Father Vasco got me out of that rotten deal.”
“That why you thought so much of that bastard Vasco?” Jeremiah Cole’s voice, cracking nervously, but trying to sound brazen.
“Shut up, boy,” Paden snapped.
They were off the hill.
“That why you were willing to put a knife in my heart? You ain’t fit . . .”
“Boy,” Paden said, “I’m going to put a hurt on you that’ll take a month of . . .”
“Quiet!” Wade barked. “All of you.”
Wade swung from the saddle, wrapped the reins around one of the weathered campo santo crosses, and moved to the church, hand on his .44, pushing the heavy door open.
The Merwin & Hulbert came out of the holster, cocked, as he stepped inside.
The morada was divided into three rooms, and he had stepped into the chapel, barren, dark, a large crucifix hanging on a wall lined with carved, wooden santos. There were no windows, but sunlight streaked from the doorway and the widening cracks, where the cottonwood vigas had been set, revealed thick dust swirling in the wind. Light also flickered from the wrought iron candelabras secured to the side walls. Wade’s boots thumped heavily as he hurried toward the dining room beyond the chapel.
“I thought you said this place was deserted.” Paden’s voice resonated in the Spartan quarters.
“I did,” Fenella said.
“Who lit ’em candles?” The Marlin sounded treacherous as Paden worked the lever.
The wind blew the door shut, whistled through the cracks and the holes in the thick adobe.
Wade lifted a tortilla, so stale it broke in his hand, off a rough-hewn table. Beside the bread rested a wooden cup, empty, but damp. Wade moved into the storeroom, then walked back to the others.
“Nobody’s here,” he said.
“Somebody was.” Paden spoke with an urgency, and a nervousness. “And not that long ago, pard.”
Wade stared at Fenella.
“I don’t know who . . .”
Something rattled, kept on rattling, and she almost screamed, turning, blood draining from her face, as Paden brought the rifle to his shoulder, as Wade swung around the .44.
“Christ A’mighty!” Paden thundered. “You like to have just caught a forty-caliber chunk of lead in your gizzard, Randy.” He butted the Marlin on the sod floor, jerked off his hat, and slapped it against his thigh.
Blankly, then bemused, Randy looked at his companions, shaking the wooden matraca he had picked up off a wooden table underneath the crucifix in his left hand, his right gripping the Greener’s twin barrels. “Y’all is way too jumpy,” he said. He dropped the rattle on the table, grabbed a santo to study it for a moment, then pitched it beside the matraca. “There anything to eat in this place, Wade? I’m plumb starvin’.”
