Río Chama, page 17
“It’s over,” Wade said. “For me. For all of us. I thought I could do something right, for just once in my life. Only . . .”
“You don’t believe all ’em stories that kid was tellin’. About that priest he killed. Those were the biggest falsehoods I ever heard.”
“It was the truth.”
Paden shook his head. “It don’t make a lick of sense. If that priest was such an evil man, if he did half the things Cole here said he done, then why does everyone in the territory want to see the kid swing?”
“Retribution. For his father. That’s part of it.”
“Yeah? What’s the other part?”
“Amado, the priest in Parkview, he’s been preaching rebellion most of his life, from what I hear. That priest at the Holy Cross Church said the Mexicans in northern New Mexico don’t cotton to outsiders, and that’s true. They didn’t ask to become part of the United States. More like they got stuck with us. And they sure didn’t want a bunch of norteamericanos to take their land from them. Same with the Jicarilla Apaches. So that’s part of it. Father Virgilio, well, I think he’s a God-fearing man, a kind man, who sees good in everyone, who thinks he’s doing right, who thinks he’s protecting his sheep. But we didn’t find anyone in Los Pinos waiting to kill us, wanting to lynch the kid. And those men in Española and Santa Cruz, well, I warrant they were too far from the Chama valley to understand what really had been happening up this way. All they knew was what they’d heard, what they’d read in the newspapers, that Jeremiah Cole killed . . .”
“That’s what you keep forgetting, Brit. You, a lawman.” He pointed at Cole. “He killed a man, pard.”
Wade threw those words back in Paden’s face. “You’ve killed men. I’ve killed men. So what?”
“So what?”
“Best thing for the boy to do is get out of this country,” Wade said. “Join the Army. Like you planned to.”
“Well, he sure as hell can’t join the Army in Las Vegas. Everybody in town would remember that face. That’s where he was tried for murder. Convicted. Sentenced to swing. Remember?”
“There are other places to enlist.”
“The law says he’s to hang. You never once turned your back on the law.”
“I turned my back on everything. And the law sent you to prison for two years, Clint. Remember? Was that right?”
Paden looked flustered. He swept off his hat with one hand, dropped the other near his revolver. Wade let his right arm brush the Mackinaw away from his own holstered weapon.
The river rolled. A raven kawed.
“You know his father won’t pay you a penny for turning Jeremiah over to him,” Wade said.
Paden’s head bobbed slightly. “But those priests . . .”
“Is a hundred and fifty dollars worth a man’s life?” Wade asked.
“You took fifty from those Catholics already.” Paden sounded desperate. “What about that? You’ve already struck a bargain.”
“I’ll pay them back.”
“How? Work like a beaver? Swamp saloons?”
“That’s for me to figure out.”
Silence.
Wade said: “It doesn’t have to be this way, Clint.”
Paden let the hat drop to the ground. “You always figured it would, though.” He smiled, sad, but sweet. “Reckon I did, too . . . pard.”
Then, Paden was screaming, his eyes wild.
“No!”
The shotgun blast was deafening. As if it had been fired over Fenella’s head. Only then did she turn to find Randy, who everyone had forgotten, ignored, who hadn’t appeared interested in the least. He stood to her side, just a few feet away, behind Wade. No one had seen him move. Everyone had focused on Wade and Paden. The Greener shotgun Randy held was smoking. The gunman was grinning, and Wade was on his knees. Paden stepped toward him, then drew his pistol.
Randy swung the shotgun toward his partner.
Paden dived.
The shotgun roared.
Paden rolled. He had dropped his pistol. Ran for the snorting sorrel. Randy pitched the empty shotgun to the grass, clawed for the revolver in his waistband. Paden desperately pulled at the Marlin in the scabbard, but the sorrel was stomping, frightened, rearing.
Randy’s pistol roared. Again. Again.
The sorrel was down, pinning Paden.
Britton Wade fell, face down.
Fenella moved then, grabbed at the knife Britton Wade had sunk into the stump, went for Randy, who kept grinning, thumbing back the hammer of his revolver as he walked toward Paden, to finish the job. To kill him. Take the money for himself.
He clubbed her with the long barrel, and she fell on her back, dazed, head bleeding. Knife still in her hand.
“I’ll be back for you later,” he said, and laughed.
Randy walked on.
Fenella heard Paden’s curses. Slowly she sat up, but the world began spinning. She had to do something. Had to stop . . . A gun popped. She blinked. Pitched forward. Vomited. Started to cry. The gun popped again, and again, and she forced herself to sit up, pulled the knife closer, held it tightly, found her resolve.
Another shot. Another.
The world came into view, and Randy had dropped the pistol, staggering back, twisting with each pop. She had forgotten about Jeremiah Cole. So had Randy, the numbskull. Cole worked the pump action of Stew’s rifle. Pulled the trigger. Randy fell to his knees with a grunt. The rifle spoke again, and Randy was on the ground, face down. Cole walked over, placed the barrel against Randy’s head, squeezed the trigger again. Once more. Then he straightened.
“Put it down!” Paden’s voice. He had dragged himself from underneath the dead horse. He didn’t have the Marlin, couldn’t get to it, but Cole didn’t notice, or care, that Paden was unarmed. He let the Lightning slip from his hands, and Paden stumbled across the meadow.
He dropped by Britton Wade, gently rolled him over. Jeremiah Cole took a step toward them, but Paden held Wade’s revolver now, which he pointed at Cole. “You stay right there. You don’t move. You take one more step, and I’ll kill you, damn it. Damn it!” He looked back at Wade. Grimaced. “Damn it all to hell!”
Fenella made herself stand, dropped the knife, walked the few rods to the two men, pressing one hand against the deep cut in her forehead. Cole just swayed in the gentle breeze, above the bloody body of Randy.
Wade coughed once. He had taken most of the charge from Randy’s shotgun in the small of his back. The blood was so dark that the wet grass looked black, and blood seeped from both corners of Wade’s mouth.
“I didn’t . . .” Paden choked out a sob. “Want . . .” He couldn’t finish. He looked up at Fenella. “Not this way.”
I know. Fenella could only mouth the words. She was clutching her crucifix, sinking to her knees, grabbing Britton Wade’s hand, squeezing, letting her forehead bleed freely, wanting it to run into her eyes, blind her, but she could see clearly. She couldn’t even cry.
The gunman coughed again, tried to swallow. His eyes turned to Paden. “Finish . . .”
Finish what? Fenella shuddered. Finish him? Finish the job? She shook her head, kept squeezing Wade’s hand, then she was looking at Paden.
“Clint.” Wade’s voice. Surprisingly strong. “Can you hear the angels singing? What beautiful voices they have.”
Fenella stared at Wade, as did Paden. She heard the rustling of grass, and glanced up. Jeremiah Cole stood above them, looking down, watching Wade. Her eyes locked once more on Britton Wade. She wanted to feel strength in the hand she gripped so fiercely.
They looked into the eyes of Britton Wade.
Maybe five minutes had passed before they finally accepted the fact that those granite eyes they were looking into were no longer staring back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Using dead limbs, knives, the stock of the Colt Lightning rifle, but mostly their fingers, their hands, the three of them clawed out a shallow grave for Britton Wade. The ground was soft, and gently they laid the gunman in the pit. No blessing, no prayers. Paden, Fenella, and Jeremiah Cole looked at the body, peaceful, eyes closed, his hands folded across his chest, clutching the crucifix that had belonged to Fenella Magauran.
Finally it was Jeremiah Cole who spoke.
“What about his books? Should they go in there with him?”
Paden shook his head. “Brit wouldn’t want ’em books.” He stopped, swallowed. “Wouldn’t want ’em books buried. He’d want ’em read. I’ll take ’em.” He tilted his head toward the horses. “Y’all go. I’ll handle this,” he said, his voice barely audible.
Fenella and Cole walked away, letting Paden cover the grave.
She gathered brush to cover the dead sorrel, while Cole dragged Randy’s blood-soaked corpse into the ruins of the cabin. Using strips of rawhide, a cross had been fastened from rotting timbers, and Paden carved Britton Wade’s name on the cross with the gunman’s folding knife, misspelling his first name, giving it only one T, but it didn’t matter. Paden stuck two folded papers between the rawhide and the dry, black wood: a battered commission as a deputy United States marshal, and a poem or something titled “Lungers Club.”
Afterward, Fenella and Jeremiah Cole mounted their horses, and waited as Paden walked to them, blue shirt and hands filthy with the dark clay along the Brazos drainage. At first, Fenella thought he had escaped the fight with Randy with nothing more than bruises, but she noticed where a few of the buckshot had hit his shoulder, and one had carved a crease along the side of his neck. Blood mingled with mud and sweat. Suddenly Clint Paden looked older. Serious. Determined.
His own horse dead, Paden mounted Wade’s buckskin.
They rode an hour before he reined up.
“Listen.” Paden stared ahead at the mountains. “I don’t know much about the law. I don’t know if you should hang or not. What I do know is that I’d be dead back yonder if it hadn’t been for you, Cole, and I ain’t one who forgets a debt like that.”
“I don’t . . .”
“Let me finish!” Paden took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Suddenly he smiled, hooking a leg over the saddle horn as he relaxed, remembering. “Brit asked me something a while back. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe I didn’t even hear his words, till just a few hours ago. ‘You ever tried to do right by yourself?’ That’s what he asked me. Well, that’s what I’m tryin’ to do now. I owe it to you, Cole. And to my pard back yonder.”
He settled back into the saddle, and nudged the buckskin into a walk.
They rode away from Parkview. Toward the mountains.
“Somebody in Santa Fe told me he figured they’d be training those volunteers to whip the Spanish down in Texas,” Paden said. “San Antonio. I ain’t never been there. That’s where I’m bound. If you still want to enlist, want to say adiós to this country, get away from this place, you might as well ride along with me, kid. War might even be over by the time we get to San Antone, but I figure I’m done with New Mexico. Well?”
“I’ll ride with you,” Jeremiah Cole said, adding, softly, testing the name, “Clint.” A few seconds passed, and he murmured, mostly to himself: “I’m done with New Mexico, too.”
“Ma’am?” Paden looked at Fenella.
“I’m with you,” she said.
They rode.
* * * * *
“Let them come. Let them come. A little farther. That’s right, come along, you damned fools. Easy. Easy. All right, boys.” Roman Cole gripped the saddle horn. “Bust ’em!”
He smiled as the first rifle boomed, watching the ambush commence. The buckskin dropped, but the rider landed on his feet, pistol in his hand, while the dun began bucking and pitched the red-headed woman over its head. Jeremiah kicked free of his stirrups, slid off the horse, and ran to help the girl.
The other one fired once, wildly, running for the holding pens Roman Cole had put along the road eleven years ago. A Winchester slug tore up the grass in front of his feet.
“I want him alive!” the senator shouted above the cannonade.
The man had reached the pens. A bullet splintered the rotting wood inches from his hand. Another clipped the nearest post. He started to duck beneath the weathered rails, but gunfire roared. Cole’s riders had galloped out of the woods, firing, yelling. Matt Denton and that Mexican rider whose name Cole could never recall loped over to Jeremiah and the girl, while the rest surrounded the man by the holding pens, sending bullets all around him. Slowly the man straightened, dropping his pistol into the wet grass, raising his hands.
“Well done,” Cole told Zechariah Stone, who sat on the buckboard’s seat, smoking his pipe. Cole kicked his bay into a walk, and eased across the battlefield, not casting even a glance at his son. Cole’s eyes locked on the man by the bullet-scarred lumber, and he slowly dismounted, handing one of his riders the reins. Behind him, Colonel Zechariah Stone urged the buckboard out of the woods.
“You’re not Britton Wade,” Cole said. He stood directly in front of the man. Big Boy Davenport and a newly hired cowhand called Cooper positioned themselves on either side of the stranger, each pointing a revolver at the gent’s head.
The man said nothing.
“Who are you?”
Nothing.
Cole slapped him savagely, dropping him to his knees.
“I’ll ask you again,” Cole said after Davenport had jerked the man to his feet. “Who are you?”
Game. This fellow sure beat the Dutch. He’d say that much about the man when he kept his tongue from wagging. He reminded Cole of the good, strong, silent riders that used to follow his orders. Too bad. After a nod, Cole watched Davenport jam the barrel of the Colt into the silent man’s groin. He wasn’t silent, not by a damned sight, after that, but Cole figured he’d never tell him anything. Not even his name.
“Stop it!” the redhead shouted, running over to her injured friend. She dropped to her knees, and lifted the groaning man’s head, cradled it in her lap. He had seen the Irish woman, just couldn’t place her, couldn’t recall the name.
“Pa!” Jeremiah hurried over, too. He smelled like a skunk, looked like some saddle bum. Sunburned. Hair needed more than a tonsorial artist’s touch. More like a currycomb and brush. Still in that striped prison suit, to boot. Big Boy Davenport was about to kick the man’s side, but Jeremiah shoved the cowhand away. “Stop it!” he yelled.
“Pa!” Jeremiah had turned. “Pa, this guy was helping me. He and the girl. He . . .”
“What happened to Archie?” Cole asked his son.
The boy’s head dropped.
“Archie Preston,” Roman Cole said. “You might remember him. And Tom . . . Hell.” He had never been good with names.
“They’re dead, Pa.”
He had been expecting that. Just didn’t want to hear it. Poor Archie. About as true a man as he’d ever hope to find. Cole looked at the man trying to sit up, his face pale, the woman’s hands on his shoulders. Cole kicked him. Wanted to break the man’s jaw, at least his nose, rake him with the rowels of his spurs, but the toe of his boot just glanced off the side of the silent man’s head.
The woman cursed, and Jeremiah tried to grab his father. That was a mistake.
Cole’s backhand sent his son to the ground with a split lip.
“You got Archie killed, boy. Archie Preston. And Tom Oliver . . .” The last name had finally come to him. “Tom Oliver was your pard, boy. And you got both of them killed.”
“It wasn’t like that, Pa. Tom . . .”
He kicked his son in the chest, knocking him flat. Turned around, had to grip the fence rails for support, only to have a jagged piece of timber slice through his palm. He cursed. Then fell silent while wrapping a handkerchief around the wound, watching Matt Denton ride over with some kind of grip, pitching the bag to the ground.
“This was on the back of the horse,” Denton said. He seemed uncomfortable, but most riders these days looked off their feed when they had to address Roman Cole.
Cole nodded an order to the man named Cooper, watching as the cowhand opened the bag, brought out a stack of books, handed them to Cole. He tossed the Bible over the pen’s rails, then stared curiously at the other titles. He studied the silent man on the ground a little closer.
“Never bothered to read Dumas,” Cole said as he threw away The Man in the Iron Mask, “but I have heard about that book. But this.” He held up A Tale of Two Cities, smiling, nodding in approval. “I’ve always been partial to Dickens.” He handed the book to Cooper, who looked like he had never held anything in his hand other than a lariat, branding iron, or pistol. Probably hadn’t.
“Pa.” Jeremiah was pleading again. Begging. Like a coward.
“Shut up!” Cole thundered. “You damned near set this whole territory ablaze. Look what you’ve done. Soiled my good name, for one. Got Dan Augustine killed. Got Archie killed. And a lot of other good men. You got me having to dodge newspaper writers wanting to know how me, a senator, a rancher, how a great man like me could have sired a boy who killed a priest.”
“Pa,” his son tried again, “you got to listen . . .”
“No. You listen. You!” He pointed at the Mexican. “You get him back to the ranch. Cooper, you go with them. And, boy, when you get there, you stay put. You don’t go outside for nothing. You stay in the room till I get back. I got to get you out of the territory, ship you up to Montana. A man I know outside of Miles City owes me a favor or two, and that’s where you’re going. If you think it gets cold in these mountains, wait till winter up there, boy. You see what you’ve done? See what kind of fix you’ve got me in? Got yourself into? Hell!”
“What about them?” Jeremiah asked.
He looked at the woman, the silent man. “I’ll deal with them.”
“Pa, they were helping. Britton Wade’s dead. And I’d be dead if it hadn’t been . . .”
“Get back to the ranch!” He looked at his bleeding palm, saw Cooper returning the book to him, then just stared at the Dickens book and his hand while Cooper and the Mexican shoved Jeremiah toward the horses. “Make sure he stays put!” he bellowed, without looking up. He didn’t lift his head until the sound of the hoofs had faded.
