Río Chama, page 19
“¡Viva Juan Vasco!” someone shouted, and the cry echoed across the village.
He wanted to scream: Don’t you know you’re being played for fools? Don’t you know I’m innocent? Can’t you see . . . ?
But they couldn’t see. And that bothered them.
It was a murmur at first, but it grew as they walked, grew into a steady chorus, into cries of rage. Some voices were Spanish, and he had never grasped more than a dozen or two words, but he could understand the English. Not at first. Not until his head cleared, until he summoned a modicum of courage, until he thought that maybe he had a slight chance.
“Let us see his face!”
“Remove the mask!”
“Show us Jeremiah Cole!”
“We must see his face. It is our right! Show us the face of the killer!”
They walked on, but slower.
“Sheriff . . . ,” one of the deputies began.
“Keep moving.”
Yet they stopped.
“Get out of me way.” The sheriff spoke again. “You people are interfering with a legal hanging. Move.”
He tried to breathe.
“Roberto, tell them what I said. Tell them if they don’t quit blocking the gateway, I’ll arrest them. Tell them those gallows can hang more than this fellow here.”
He heard the translation, and the rallying cry of the people.
“Show us his face!”
“Remove the hood!”
“The lad is shamed!” the sheriff yelled, desperate. “He ain’t . . . he’s scared. Men have the . . . right . . . to wear a hood when they’re being executed. It’s . . . it’s . . .”
Spanish voices drowned out his attempts at reason.
The shotgun roared, ringing Paden’s ears.
“I’m the law, damn it!” the sheriff said. “That’s a warning. I’m bringing the boy to the gallows. Now step aside.” He swore, muttered to one of the deputies: “Why do those nigger soldiers just stand there? Why don’t they come help us out?”
Paden tried to swallow. Couldn’t. Not with the gag in his mouth.
“Roberto, tell them I put the next load of buckshot in their bellies.” The hammer clicked.
They were moving again. Someone spit. He wondered if they had been trying to hit him, or Sheriff Murphey.
“Just a few more feet,” the sheriff whispered, “then up the gallows. I ain’t reading no death warrant. We just put him on the door, put the noose over his head, and drop him. Curtis, you and Greg wait below. Make damned sure nobody jerks off the sack after we spring the trap.”
They were inside the enclosure. Nearing the gallows. The deputies holding him gripped his arms tighter. As scared as he was.
* * * * *
Ten more yards, and they’d be walking up the gallows.
Roman Cole wiped clammy palms on his trousers. He spit out the cigar, tried to breathe. Those damned peasants were chanting again, demanding to see the face of the man condemned, but Luke Murphey was earning his pay.
Cole stood just in front of the cavalry troopers inside the enclosure. He wanted to look over his shoulder, see what those Army boys might plan on doing, but didn’t want to give anything away. His stomach gurgled, and he felt the urge to run to the nearest privy, relieve his bowels.
Damn. He ran his hand over his stubbled jaw. Father Amado and Father Virgilio blocked the steps up the gallows. Talking to Murphey. Pointing at the prisoner.
“He’s my son!” Cole hadn’t wanted to scream, but the words came out, cracking, revealing the panic. “Let him . . . die in peace.” His chest felt as if someone had laid a dozen anvils on it, and he knew his plan was shot to hell.
Only . . . maybe his stricken plea had worked. He hadn’t planned that, either, but those two fool priests stepped aside, and Luke Murphey moved toward the awaiting noose, the masked prisoner shoved up after him.
“Stop it! Stop it! For the love of God, that is not . . .”
Cole whirled, felt his heart skip, saw the red-headed woman rushing through the crowd that had formed a human wall next to the ten-foot high pine palisade. He cursed Matt Denton and Big Boy Davenport for not killing the girl, but it was his own damned fault. He should have done it himself.
Only someone grabbed the woman, put a gloved hand over her mouth. At first, he thought it might be Zech Stone, but that old fool lay passed out on the floor in Pedro’s Place with his cur dog. No, it was one of the sheriff’s deputies, but everyone in the whole damned place stared at the man and the woman, and some idiot officer from Fort Lewis marched for the couple, followed by a sergeant and three darkies.
“Get it over with, Luke!” Cole roared. He was racing for the redhead, gripping the butt of his Remington revolver. He’d kill her if he had to.
He slid to a stop, almost fell, let his hand slide off the .44. Blinked, unbelieving. Heard the crowd gasp. Wished he were dead.
“Leave her be,” Jeremiah said. “It’s over, Pa.”
Roman Cole’s eyes shot around him, feeling all the prying looks, hearing all the whispers. The officer and his buffalo soldiers had stopped, too. Cole wet his lips. He tried to call out his son’s name, only he couldn’t speak.
* * * * *
Paden heard a Spanish prayer, followed by another voice.
“What is the meaning of this?”
He was jerked down the steps, and leathery hands tore the mask off his face, the light from the rising sun almost blinding him. The next thing Paden knew, he was on the ground, hands and feet still manacled, the gag still in his mouth.
The younger of the two priests pulled Sheriff Luke Murphey down the wooden steps, yanked the shotgun from the lawman’s hand, and pitched the weapon underneath the scaffold. Then the priest spit in Murphey’s face.
Another priest, much older, crossed himself, walked past Paden, straight to the man standing in the center of the enclosure. Paden feared he was dreaming. It couldn’t be. Why?
Jeremiah Cole wore a fine suit of black broadcloth. His face had been shaved, his hair cut, slicked back, combed. He wore a black silk cravat, boots shining like the ace of spades in a new deck, a white shirt, and a silver cross pinned on his breast. The elderly priest stopped in front of him, turned, and, head bowed as both men prayed, they walked toward the gallows.
Someone was working on the knot, and the bandanna fell from Paden’s mouth. Paden sucked in fresh air, tasting the blood from his nose, his own sweat. Rolling over, he saw Fenella. He fought back tears. She was alive!
“How?”
“Shhhh,” she whispered.
The boots of Jeremiah Cole and the sandals of Father Virgilio thumped on the wooden steps. Cole walked directly to the platform, just behind the dangling noose. Father Virgilio knelt, still praying, while Father Amado raced up the steps. He roughly pulled the noose over Jeremiah Cole’s head. The kid barely blinked. After tightening the coils, the priest walked to the lever, and pointed at Senator Roman Cole, who stood like a marble statue in the center of the compound.
“Roman Cole, you are a disgrace. You have no decency. There should be two Coles on this platform today, to fulfill the prophecy.” After repeating his words in Spanish, the angry priest gripped the lever with both hands.
Softly Father Virgilio prayed.
Jeremiah Cole stared at his father.
They waited. Amado’s knuckles whitened, but the lever never budged, and then the priest started backing away, color draining from his face, staring at his trembling hands, tears cascading down his cheeks, and he ran to the back of the scaffold, sobbing at first before retching, then crying harder, shamed.
Nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. No one spoke. Even the wind had stopped. There was nothing to hear except Father Virgilio’s prayers, and Father Amado’s sobs.
Then footsteps.
Slowly, unevenly Sheriff Luke Murphey ascended the platform, walked to the lever, and turned to the crowd. He looked straight ahead as his unsteady hands gripped the lever, but Paden doubted if the lawman saw anything.
Paden swallowed, felt Fenella’s hand grip his shoulder, tighter, tighter.
A moment later, Jeremiah Cole’s eyes locked on Paden.
“Hey, Paden.” Cole smiled.
Paden couldn’t believe how calm the boy looked.
“I’m standing on my own two feet.”
The trap door sprang open.
Epilogue
Letter from Paden Farms, Martinez, California
To Sean Paden, Gadsden Hotel, Douglas, Arizona
Postmarked Thursday, August 17, 1939
Dear Son:
Your letter of the 3rd came as a blessing, and I hope this overdue reply finds you in good health. You would not believe the orchards this year, especially the peaches, and I attribute our bountiful crop to your father, looking down upon us, watching over us, as he has always done, only now from the Kingdom of Heaven.
I trust you have heard from your sisters, but, if not—for I know all of my children are busy—Colleen is a mother again, but still teaching those poor Indians at the reservation, while Karen is busy with all her costumes at Paramount Studios. My dear friend Edna jokes that she can never take me to a moving picture because I get so excited that I’ll scream out during the show: “That’s my daughter’s dress . . . on Carole Lombard!”
But you did not write me to hear about fruit, or the accomplishments of your sisters, and, so, with arthritic hand I will do my best to answer your questions.
When Clint was called away last winter, I did not know he kept a journal, but your father was always full of surprises in the forty years we had on earth together. The carefree vagabond I first met in New Mexico would have been the last man I’d ever expect to settle down and raise plums, pears, peaches, and apricots on a farm in Contra Costa County, but he did, and we’ve done it well, I think. I never knew of the journals until I found them after his passing. I didn’t read them. I couldn’t read them. Not then, not now, but maybe later. Yet I knew you would want to see them, and I think he would want you to have them.
He didn’t write them when we first met. I think later, when he had settled down, when he came to accept and maybe even understand all that happened, he began to write, secretly, to try to put things in perspective. Maybe for his children to read, so they might better know their father.
Yes, your father spent time in the territorial penitentiary in New Mexico. I really don’t know much about the circumstances that landed him in trouble, but I know all too well of the events leading up to the execution of Jeremiah Cole. Yes, your father rode with Britton Wade, and me—for I was that strange woman mentioned in some newspaper articles after the hanging, and the novels, trash, that were published a short time afterward.
Yet you must understand that Britton Wade was not the rough-hewn man-killer he has been made out to be in those dreadful books and that even worse movie, and your father certainly wasn’t the foolish sidekick that Andy Devine made him out to be.
Your father and I never talked much about what happened in New Mexico. After reading his journals, and from all your subsequent research, you know why.
How did I survive? God watched over me. He always has. Those two riders carried me into the woods, and when those rough hands lifted me out of the saddle and set me on the straw, I thought I was dead. No, I knew it was over, for me.
“All right,” the cowboy said, and, when I opened my eyes, I saw he was not talking to me. He was looking at the other cowboy, a bigger man. In fact, if I remember correctly, he was called Big Boy. The younger man was Matt Denton. I do remember that, for it was he who saved my life. The big one, still mounted, had drawn a knife.
“You can put that knife back in its sheath,” Matt Denton said, “because I ain’t never laid a hand on a woman, and I ain’t about to start now. No matter what Mister Cole wants.”
The big man did as he was told, with relief.
“Ma’am.” The young man swept off his big Mexican sombrero when he looked at me. “You reckon you can find your way out of these woods?”
I nodded. I guess I did. I’m not really sure, though.
“Well, you do that. Stay clear of T.A. Just get to Chama, get on the train, get as far away from here as you can. Don’t let Mister Cole or none of his men catch you. They ain’t . . . well, ma’am . . . I’m the one who ought to be hanging. Not that man that you was with. I’m sorry this is all I can do for you.”
It was enough.
He pulled tally book and pencil from his war bag, and started writing. “You want to ride south with me?” he asked his companion.
“Reckon so.”
I’ll never forget the note they left tacked to the tree, before they left me, alive, in the thick of Roman Cole’s forest.
We, the UndeRsignD, do herby dEclar that we kwit Roman Cole we take horses 4 payment, & dont nobody dar come lookN 4 us
(Signed) M.J. Denton
X
It’s likely the hired hands Senator Cole had charged to make sure his son remained at his ranch house also abruptly quit, and lit out of the territory, after failing in that task. I hope they did. For their own sake.
I’m sorry to say I can’t help you out much when it comes to further research about the story. Jeremiah Cole hanged, and I might add that no one ever died so bravely as that poor, troubled young man. It comes as no surprise to me that Luke Murphey resigned as sheriff of Río Arriba County shortly after the execution, since you discovered such reports in the New Mexico state archives. Undoubtedly he had no choice but to resign after his shameful complicity in trying to hang your father.
Likewise, I cannot say what became of Roman Cole. He left the Senate. I know that much, but whether it was of his own volition, I cannot say. Fifteen years ago, a man I had worked for in Chama, James Gage, who ran the mercantile there, I met by chance at the railroad station in Martinez. He was on his way to San Francisco. He told me that Roman Cole spent the rest of his life alone in his ranch house, letting it fall into disrepair. On the rare occasions that he showed his face in Chama or Tierra Amarilla, Cole never admitted that he had ever had sons. He was a bitter, old man. The lumber mills, and all his other interests, were sold shortly after Jeremiah’s execution, although he stingily held onto the land he had fought so hard to take. Those were the reports of Mr. Gage, but he had never really cared for Roman Cole, although he certainly straddled the fence while in business in Chama. He had to. I don’t blame him.
Who owns Cole’s land now? I haven’t a guess, but I suppose the Mexican settlers of New Mexico are still fighting for the return of their land grants. Alas, many, I fear, will always be losing that fight.
You write that you found Roman Cole’s obituary in the October 10, 1909, edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican, and that it cites his cause of death as cerebral apoplexy. Was that a lie? Did the senator really hang himself? Was the curse of the bruja fulfilled? Well, I, for one, have never believed in curses. Maybe Cole hanged himself, perhaps he had a stroke. If you want to believe in witchcraft, you can always argue that Roman Cole died by the rope when Jeremiah died by the rope.
I think Roman Cole was dead, spiritually, when I left him with his dead son on a cool May morning in Tierra Amarilla.
No, I did not know that Zechariah Stone wrote a book about his life. No, I do not care to read it. I only met that famous scout briefly, and while he may have done many great things during his life, what happened on the road through the Tusas Mountains was vile. Let him try to wash his hands of the matter, much as he tried to forget about the evil he had done by drinking himself to near-death in that saloon. I’m sure his story is “lively reading”—lies usually are—but my reading pleasures these days are usually limited to lies—ha, ha!—from my children.
Where is Britton Wade’s grave? I squeeze shut my eyes, try to picture the country, but I can’t remember. I’m closing in on seventy years, you know.
Sean, if your father’s journals and your subsequent investigations have revealed anything, I hope it is this. People change. There is good in the darkest of men, and evil in the best. We can only hope that we ride toward the light, and somehow manage to beat off the Devil. Your father did that. So did Britton Wade.
All of us who undertook that journey in 1898, all of us who rode up the Río Chama, changed, Son. The foolish girl who waited in the loft of the stables at the church in Santa Cruz was not the same woman who stood at the foot of the gallows crying as Jeremiah Cole was hanged.
Those were violent times. It was a savage country.
History isn’t neat, Sean. It’s messy. It’s ugly. Often, there are no easy answers or explanations. I hope you understand this. I also hope you will forgive me for asking you not to mention what you have read in Clint’s journals to your sisters, until after I am gone. Yes, of course, you may seek that truth, and maybe, just maybe, with your passion for history and for fighting injustice, you may correct all of the lies about the journey up the Río Chama, and the execution of Jeremiah Cole.
I just don’t know if I have anything else to say. There is not much more that I can add.
It has been a beautiful summer here at the farm, Sean. I do take pleasure in the smell and taste of fruit, in the hills, in the forests. I do love to hear the train whistle blow at night, although that sometimes leaves me melancholy, especially these past eight lonely months. And I do so enjoy your descriptions of the desert in southern Arizona. It sounds like a wonderful, adventurous place, and maybe one day I’ll let you lure me away from Paden Farms to stay in that fancy hotel where you’re working. I haven’t traveled far from Martinez in a long, long time.
Well, Son, it is getting late, and I am an old woman, so I will close for now. You should write Colleen if you haven’t yet, and maybe you can urge that older sister of yours into finally giving me a grandson. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of my granddaughters, but I’d love to have a boy to bounce on my knee.
Your loving mother,
Fenella
P.S. The train whistle from the 11:05 just blew, and I remembered something else. It’s probably not important to the truth of your story, but it explains, I think, the life your father and I shared.
