Río Chama, page 4
Brushing the dirt off his trousers, Wade stared at the two Mexicans across the hall, then at his companions in the cramped cell: an Irish railroader, his head between his knees; a man in buckskin trousers with a face purple with bruises, eyes swollen shut; and a snoring cowboy with a black eye and busted lip. Wade knew none of them, and they didn’t give a fip about him.
The hall door opened, forcing Wade to close his eyes tightly against the light, which really wasn’t that bright. Footsteps sounded like an elephant stomping, and then a sharp voice barked out: “You! Come on!”
After forcing his eyes open, he found a pockmarked man wearing a deputy sheriff’s badge.
“I said come on,” the deputy said, stuck a key in the lock, grinding, jerking open the heavy door.
Wade grabbed his hat off the floor, thankful the urine had missed it, started to put it on his head, thought better, and stepped into the hall. The deputy slammed the door shut, causing Wade to flinch, locked it, and motioned Wade to walk ahead of him.
“Careful where you step,” the lawman said.
The Mexicans in the opposite cell, lying on their cots or on the floor, sniggered.
* * * * *
They stepped into the jailer’s office, warmed by a coal-burning Windsor stove, just as a burly man in a brown coat kicked some poor fellow on the floor.
“I made room, Sheriff,” the deputy behind Wade said. “This feller was the only one standin’ up.”
The man in the brown coat whirled, considering Wade with a moment’s glance. “He’ll do as good as any,” he told the deputy. Then to Wade: “Sit down. I’m almost finished here.”
A broad-shouldered man with a thick red mustache flecked with silver, the sheriff spoke in a heavy Irish brogue. His fists resembled anvils, knuckles like rocks, scarred, flecked with blood. He looked big enough to have inflicted all the pain Wade had seen through bloodshot eyes back in the jail, and if that railroader and cowhand had not been able to whip the sheriff in a drunken brawl, the tiny, silver-haired man in the black robes, balled up on the floor could do nothing against the big lawman’s wrath.
“Feel like giving me any other orders, you damned greaser?” The sheriff drew back, kicked the man in the ribs with square-toed stovepipe boots. “You think I don’t know me job?” He lifted his leg, tried to stomp the old man’s head, but the man had enough awareness, enough sense, to roll from the boot heel. Then the sheriff spit on the groaning man, spun around, pointing a thick finger at the deputy. “Greg, haul this Mex’s carcass inside.”
Wade found himself staring at the old man on the floor, and grimaced when the man rolled over, his lips split, hands clutching his gut, but black eyes open, still defiant. He wore a reversed collar of white. A crude wooden cross attached to a rawhide thong that hung around his neck was now on the floor, stained with the priest’s blood.
The next thing Wade knew, he had forgotten his hangover, his own decrepit condition, had filled a ladle with water from an oaken keg in the corner, and knelt beside the Mexican priest, lifting his head, letting him drink.
Most of the water dribbled down the old man’s chin, but he still managed to say—“Gracias.”—although the effort alone caused pain.
“Gambler,” the sheriff said to Wade’s back, “you’re out of me hoosegow because we need room for this troublemaker. But I can just as easily let some other dumb bastard go free.”
Ignoring the lawman, Wade helped the priest to his feet, eased him to a chair, and heard the sheriff moving up behind him, heard the leather creak as the big plug-ugly drew a Schofield revolver from the holster, and Wade knew he was about to be buffaloed.
The outside door swung open, letting in a sharp blast of icy wind, and another deputy stepped inside, pounding muddy boots on the floor, pulling out an envelope from inside his canvas coat, and telling the sheriff: “Murphey, I got them papers you need from the judge to fetch young Cole from Santa Fe.”
“Throw them on me desk, you blathering idiot, and close the damned door!” The sheriff holstered his revolver, and Wade straightened, turning to face the lawman.
“Seems like I missed quite the doin’s,” the new deputy, grinning, said after he set the envelope down and warmed his hands by the stove.
“Virgilio was raisin’ Cain again,” the first deputy said.
“All I ask of Señor Murphey is for justice,” the priest said through tight lips. At first, Wade thought the old Mexican was talking to him, but the priest kept those dark eyes trained on the Río Arriba County lawman. “That you do as the judge has decreed. That you do not bend to the demon Cole’s ire.”
“You mean Senator Cole,” the first deputy said with a chuckle.
“Jeremiah Cole has been sentenced to hang.” The priest crossed himself. “God have mercy on his soul. All I ask . . .”
“You do more than ask, greaser.” Murphey placed both hands on his hips. “You and that shadow of yours been preaching up quite a sermon of fire and brimstone for your chile-loving churchgoers, ain’t you? Oh, don’t think I haven’t heard about that bounty you offered. Two hundred dollars for the gent who brings you Jeremiah’s head. That’s mighty Christian of you.” The sheriff surprised Wade when he looked at him and smiled. “Does that sound Christian to you, Mister Gambler? You ever met a man of God like this old padre here who wants to see some young man get his neck stretched? Is that what God himself would wish? Is that what Christ would preach?”
“I’m no theologian,” Wade said.
The sheriff stared at him blankly. Theologian wasn’t in his vocabulary.
“Judas money, iffen you ask me,” the first deputy said. “It stinks of Judas money.”
“And now this little man of God tries to bribe me,” Murphey said, his thick head bobbing, “with thirty pieces of silver.”
Speaking in Spanish, the priest gasped, and clutched his ribs. Wade took the ladle and walked back to the bucket to bring the old man more water.
“It is not true,” Father Virgilio said, switching to English. “We offer money for justice, to see Jeremiah Cole brought here to face his crime, and to face his Redeemer. We pray for his soul.” Now the priest stared at Wade, as if he were staring into Britton Wade’s own lost soul, continuing: “Yet we also must do this for the souls of those who attend our parish.” Fighting pain, he crossed himself. “We do not want the young Cole lad murdered. We do not want his blood to stain the hands of those poor men and women who live in this valley, but they cry for vengeance. This is the only way to bring peace to the Río Chama.”
The sheriff laughed. Wade knelt beside the priest, handed him the ladle.
“I ain’t that up on Scripture,” the first deputy said, “but don’t the Good Book say somethin’ ’bout ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord?’ Don’t it?”
Ignoring the question, the priest drank. He thanked Wade, who stood, placing the ladle on the lawman’s desk near the envelope.
* * * * *
He had heard about Jeremiah Cole on the train down from Antonito, Colorado, playing poker in the smoking car with Dan Augustine. “I could use a man like you, Wade,” Augustine had said, after emptying Wade’s meager purse before they had reached Osier Station. “Could use your gun. Pay’s good. Roman Cole’s no skinflint, not when it comes to saving his boy’s neck.”
Senator Roman Cole ruled the Chama valley. There were those that said he ran New Mexico, at least its northern ranges, and some said he, along with lawyer Tom Catron, controlled the notorious Santa Fe Ring, which, in turn, governed, through force, power, and bribery, the business and politics of the territory. One son had died—hanged himself, if the stories were to be believed—three years earlier, and now the only other child, twenty-year-old Jeremiah Cole, had been sentenced to the gallows for one of the grisliest crimes imaginable.
Jeremiah Cole, with parties unknown, had ridden up to a little Catholic church in the Chama valley, beaten the priest senseless, then strung him up by the neck, leaving him kicking, choking to death from a cottonwood branch. Cole had been found guilty of murder, the appeals denied, and Governor Miguel Antonio Otero had signed his death warrant. There were those across New Mexico and Colorado who said the only reason Cole’s son was even brought to trial was because Republican President McKinley had appointed a Mexican as territorial governor in 1897, and the murdered priest had also been Mexican.
The execution had been scheduled for Friday, May 13, 1898, outside the Río Arriba County Courthouse in Tierra Amarilla.
Wade had declined Augustine’s invitation. He couldn’t say exactly why. Maybe he hadn’t cared for Dan Augustine’s reputation. Maybe he didn’t want to work for another hired gunman. Maybe he didn’t want to work for a man who had beaten him soundly, busted him, at jacks or better. Maybe it had something to do with Britton Wade’s own forgotten past.
Whatever the reason, Wade had not given the story of Jeremiah Cole another moment’s thought . . . until now.
* * * * *
“I’m done pampering this greaser,” Sheriff Murphey said. “He’s a bad egg. Threatening the peace of me valley, trying to bribe a duly elected officer of the court, preaching death instead of love. You’re under arrest, Virgilio. And you . . .” His eyes burned with fury, but Wade didn’t look away, recalling something else Dan Augustine had told him: The county sheriff’s all bluster, acts like a big man, but Roman Cole butters his bread, and that mick law dog would piss his pants if the senator looked at him long enough.
“You was too drunk last night to tell us anything,” Sheriff Murphey was saying. “I’d fine you, but your wallet was empty. I’m turning you loose, Mister Gambler, but I don’t like vagrants in me town or me county. Greg, fetch his possibles.”
“He didn’t have nothin’ much but a ratty old grip with some books and such in it.” The deputy pulled the Gladstone from a pie safe, snapped his fingers, remembered something else. “Though this might fetch a few dollars.” He opened a desk drawer, and a moment later dropped the grip and gun belt on top of the desk.
The sheriff’s eyes brightened at sight of the gun rig. “Well, on second thought, that pretty pistol and leather ought to cover the fine. Reckon we’ll just confiscate that in lieu of thirty dollars or thirty days.”
“I reckon you won’t,” Wade said. He wondered if he had overplayed his hand.
“Like I said.” Murphey cracked his knuckles. “I can lock you back up with el padre and set some other rascal free. I’ll be keeping the gun.”
“Read the name stamped in the belt, Greg,” Wade said, and waited.
“I’ll be hanged.” The deputy looked up in shock, pointing a bony finger at the gun belt. “It says that this here is . . .” He turned to stare at Wade. “It says he’s Britton Wade.”
His hangover had vanished, and he stood a little straighter, felt a bit prouder, as he walked to the desk, grabbed the gun belt, buckled it on. No one said a thing, but Sheriff Murphey nodded at the priest, and the two deputies moved, pulling Father Virgilio to his feet, half dragging him toward the cells.
“Father?” Wade asked quietly, right hand on the Merwin & Hulbert’s butt.
The deputies stopped. The priest lifted his aching head.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Father?”
“Por favor,” the old man said, “if you will tell Father Amado in Parkview what has happened here today.”
“Consider it done.”
“Vaya con Dios.”
The door shut behind the priest, leaving Wade alone with the sheriff.
“I still want you out of me county, Wade,” the sheriff said. “Next time, I’ll have Roman Cole’s men with me.” He nodded for emphasis before fleeing to the jail cells himself, frightened at being alone with a man with Britton Wade’s reputation.
Wade took a deep breath, checked the Gladstone, saw his books, his flask, his laudanum, other sundries. He hadn’t planned on doing anything else, other than telling this Father Amado that the old priest was in jail, likely had some busted ribs, could stand to see a doctor. Then Britton Wade would be on his way, find some other town, farther south, likely wind up in some other jail. Yes, that’s what he figured would happen.
Then, his eyes landed on the envelope.
Chapter Six
Jesus Christ looked down at him from the cross.
Britton Wade didn’t know how long he had been staring back at the ornately carved wooden crucifix hanging on the mud-colored adobe wall. Didn’t know how long he had even been awake. Wasn’t exactly sure where he was.
He lay on his back, on a straw bed on the floor, shirtless, bootless, left shoulder bandaged, no longer numb but hurting like a son-of-a-bitch. The room was Spartan, with only the crucifix, the bed, a wooden bowl, an old towel by his side, a small brown jug within reach, two tallow candles flittering light through tin sconces on the wall over his head. He smelled the sweet fragrance of piñon burning in the small fireplace across the room. His boots leaned against the wall, but he couldn’t find his gun belt, his grip, or the Merwin & Hulbert .44.
With his right arm, he pushed himself up, sitting, waiting for the room to quit spinning, and gently tested his left arm. He could move it, but the shoulder flamed with pain. He saw bloodstains on the cotton bandages, knew he had been shot. His eyes narrowed. Where’s Cole?
Before he could muster enough strength to stand, he heard footsteps behind the adobe wall, and a moment later he had a visitor.
“Ah, you are awake.” A young priest, black hair, black eyes, brown robe of coarse wool, knelt beside him, placed the back of his right hand against Wade’s forehead, and smiled. “No fever. Muy bien. Forgive me. I am Father Marcelino Eusebio de Quesada y Azcárranga.” He bowed and shrugged. “A long name for such a short man.”
“I’m . . .” Wade stopped. The room had started spinning again. He felt the priest ease him back on the straw bed. When he opened his eyes, the small Mexican man nodded.
“I know who you are, señor. You are Britton Wade, the killer.”
Wade swallowed. His mouth was dry as dirt. Realizing this, the priest handed him the small jug, lifted his head, helped him drink, much as Britton Wade had assisted Father Virgilio in Chama. The water tasted so good.
“Señor Cole is with your friends,” Father Marcelino said gently.
“You know who we are.” Wade closed his eyes again, took a deep breath, slowly let it out. “Yet you . . .”
“You come to this house of God asking for sanctuary. Thus you shall have it as long as it is His will. Perhaps, my will.”
Suddenly Wade’s eyes opened, serious, concerned. “You said . . . my friends?”
“Bienvenido a La Iglesia de Santa Cruz de la Cañada. Known to you norteamericanos as the Holy Cross Church. The village, or colony as it was called in the time of Diego de Vargas, is officially La Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz de Los Españoles Mejicanos del Rey Nuestro Señor Carlos Segundo. Again, a big name for but a small place. It is the way of our people. But most call it Santa Cruz.” The priest looked at the dark walls, humbly. “It has a long history in New Mexico. For more than one hundred and sixty years, this house of God has stood here, although the . . . how do you say . . . parapets? . . . sí, that is the word . . . they are new.” He looked back at Wade. “Lo siento. I talk too much, but my heart is full of love for history, this history of my people, the history of my village, the history of this santuario. You asked of your friends?”
“Yeah. Who?”
“You should thank your three companions perhaps more than me for keeping you from harm’s way. I grant you and Señor Cole sanctuary, sí. But they keep it. Wait. I will bring them here. They will be most pleased to learn that you are awake. Un momento, por favor.”
Wooden sandals tapped across the floor, and Wade tried to call out for the priest to wait, that he had more questions, but the windy little man was gone, and Wade forced himself up again, looking for his pistol, his Gladstone, anything. Briefly he thought about the crucifix on the wall. Could he use that as a weapon? Then, exhausted, he just gave up, still sitting, and waited. If those three men, whoever they were, wanted him dead, they could have killed him already.
Five minutes later, Father Marcelino returned to the room, followed by a tall, slender man wearing a blue bib-front shirt. Wade remembered him, back in Española, coming out of the cantina, the one with the bicycle. Wade hadn’t studied the man’s face back then. It was too dark, and he hadn’t had a whole lot of time, but it didn’t take him long now to remember.
“Clint Paden,” Wade said.
A boyish grin spread across Paden’s handsome face.
“God bless you, Brit.” The Southern drawl hadn’t lessened any over the past decade. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you remember me after all these years.”
He was a young man, maybe not yet thirty, with bright green eyes, and long, sandy hair. Hadn’t shaved in a day or two. Wore brick-colored britches stuck in shiny black boots, red silk scarf around his neck, a London-made Webley revolver was holstered on his left hip, butt forward, and he carried an 1881 lever-action Marlin in his left hand.
“How long have you been out?” Wade asked.
Still smiling, Paden shook his head. “Oh”—he waved off the question like it was a joke—“they didn’t give me but two years. On account that I was just a kid sowing his oats. You ought to remember that, Brit.”
“I meant for killing that drummer down in Eddy.”
Briefly the smile vanished, then reappeared. “You still read the newspapers, I see.” Paden shrugged. “But you don’t read enough. Yeah, I rode down to Eddy where they was building that flume, stopped in at Wolf Town, this little watering hole. Had a big old wolf, stuffed, showing off ’em yellow teeth, yellow eyes. I think they use marbles for eyes when they’re stuffing a wolf like that. I sure admired that wolf. Anyhow, I figured on just passing the time dealing a few hands of twenty-one, but there was this law . . . nobody told me, mind you . . . that says no gambling, no petticoats.” The grin flashed wider. “Don’t that beat all, Brit? So this drummer takes exception, starts arguing with me. But he had a pepperbox pistol on him, so the grand jury give me what they call a no-bill. Self-defense. No, sir, I haven’t seen the inside of a jail in a long, long time.” The smile was gone. This time it did not come back. “Not like you, Brit. You see, I read the newspapers, too.”
