19
Chisum returned to the ranch after midnight. Dog-tired and bone-weary, he hung his hat on the rack in the living room. Still no sign of her whereabouts. The entire ride home, the same concern had hounded him—was she still alive? Sleepy-eyed, Hattie broke his thoughts of concern when she stuck her head through the kitchen doorway.
“You’s hungry, Mr. John?”
“I could eat something. Any word on Juanita?”
“No, sah, but I think that scallywag Coyote is behind some of this.”
“Why him?”
“Something in my bones tells me so.”
“No. Not him.” Chisum shook his head to dismiss her distrust. Why would that little unbathed rascal bite the hand that feeds him? No, the housekeeper was mistaken. Coyote wouldn’t dare meddle with his niece. He had to be smarter than that. On the other hand, the Apaches didn’t have her—they’d scoured the reservation. Besides, Stanley’s Apaches, employees knew all that went on there—she wasn’t in any Apaches’ hands. Unless they’d murdered her. No one had bragged they’d murdered her. Raped her, yes, but no one spoke of her death. The one frightened young buck they’d dragged in to question had said a tall white man took her away from them. They all looked alike to the Apache. Tall man in cowboy gear was the best description they’d gotten out of the boy. Somewhere near where they’d taken her from her horse, he’d taken her from them—Chisum halfway expected to find her at home. She wasn’t back. Besides Coyote was not tall, not even to a short Indian boy.
Chisum ate the plate of roast beef and potatoes Hattie served him. He drank a few stiff drinks, then dropped into a troubled sleep despite his absolute fatigue. Throughout the night he kept waking up and worrying about her safety.
“Mr. John! Mr. John!” Hattie’s impatient shouts outside his bedroom door drew him upright in the bed from his latest sleep and he rushed to the door.
“Whatever is wrong?” He batted his sleep-crusted eyes at the woman in her night shift standing at the foot of the stairs.
“They done sent you a note.” She waved it at him.
He bolted down the stairs to grasp the note.
“Who brought it?” He tried to see the writing, but in the dim hall light he couldn’t. He rushed into the living room and went to the window to use the early morning light outside to see by.
“What’s it say?” She came on his heels.
The handwriting was badly scrawled, with poor spelling; he read it three times to be certain of the message.
Chisum
You want to sees youer niece a live a gain. Bring ten thoousand dollars in gold to Fransisco Springs by noon today. Don’t bring gunds or the law. She dy fist.
“What’s it says?” Hattie asked again.
He shook his head. With a deep sigh he crossed the room and dropped his butt on the sofa. There was a good chance that she was still alive. If they’d harmed a hair on her head—they’d never find a hole deep enough to hide in from his wrath. At last he spoke to the woman. “They want ten thousand dollars ransom for her.”
“Oh, dear Jesus. Who done got her, Mr. John?”
“I don’t know, but they can’t spell or write and never signed it.”
“It’s that Coyote. I bet my last dime on it. What you going to do?”
“Get some money and meet them.”
“You’s got ten thousand dollars?” She narrowed her dark eyes, questioning him.
“No, but I’ll get some of it and hope they will trade. They can’t spell any better than that, maybe they can’t count either.”
“Say, that be a whole lot to count, huh? I sure hope she ain’t hurt none.”
“So do I.”
“Oh, Mr. John—” Hattie dropped to her knees, grasped him around the waist, and began to cry. “I have worried about that poor child. What we going to do?”
“Go ransom her.” He patted her on the back of the head. He could never recall such an emotional display by his housekeeper. For twenty years the woman had served the meals, cleaned the house, seen to all the details. She and her Ben came to work for him when he still lived in Little Rock—two ex-slaves who’d worked in a big house on a plantation in the delta before the war, out of work, dressed in rags. He recalled Hattie’s promise.
“You ain’t hiring no trash, Mr. John. We going to clean up and be respectable. Ben and me needs the work. We knows how to care for folks.” And they did. Chisum never regretted hiring them—they became the family he didn’t have, the housekeeper he never married, and the caring people who made his every day work out.
“Hattie, dry those eyes. I’ll have that girl back home by dark tonight.”
“Mr. John, I gonna be praying for you.” She looked up, her long lashes glistening with tears in the fresh creamy light filling the room.
He sent Hattie on her way to fix his breakfast. Upstairs in his bedroom he spent the next five minutes straining to force out his urine into the night jug. The effort proved excruciatingly painful, and his reward was a very slow intermittent dribble, despite the pressure of his full bladder. He closed his eyes in impatience as the droplets splashed into the metal container. With dread he considered inserting the stem—no, it would eventually come out. He strained harder.
At noontime, Chisum reached Arido. He dismounted before the two-story adobe building that served as a jail-courthouse. A former warehouse and store, it served county officials well. Chisum paused to look over the activity. The small village, wedged in the deep canyon and watered by the Arido Creek, was the commercial hub of the region. Down the street a blacksmith’s hammer rang out as he worked on steel. Bitter smoke from cooking fires hung in the air. Half-naked Mexican children darted about, screaming and busy playing, oblivious to the freight wagons parked in the center of the street or the commerce in the rival mercantiles.
When his land development project was completed, he would see all this business was moved over the mountains to his new town. Irrigation would bring in many more settlers than ranching, lots of farmers, their families, and more income from crops, banking, agricultural supplies, seed. Arido would dry up. He turned on his heel and went inside the sheriff’s side door.
“Chisum, what brings you to town?” Monahan removed his dusty boots from his desk, jerked down the hem of his vest, and sat up straight in the chair.
Chisum tossed the ransom note on his desk. “This.”
A frown formed on Monahan’s face when he read the paper. “Why, I thought you’d found her by this time. These fellas kidnapped Juanita?”
“I believe so. I have looked all over hell for her. The army’s out there farting around. Yesterday I personally questioned one of the Apaches who was in on that raid. He said a tall white man took her from them. I don’t think he was lying.”
“Hell, who was it?”
“He didn’t say. I intend to pay this ransom. For her safety. Then I want the bastards run down and stomped into the ground.”
“You pay them, get the girl, and I’ll ride in and take them while they’re counting the money.”
“Don’t bring the sunsabitches in alive either.”
“I won’t. When you going up there?”
“After I leave here.”
“Take an hour, then go. I’ll have my deputies ready. You leave out, and we will come far enough behind they won’t see us.”
Chisum considered the plan. If the kidnappers had a spy in town, he would know what they were up to. He could ride out and warn the others at the spring, if there were others.
“No.” Chisum shook his head in disapproval. “You tell everyone that you’re riding out to check on some horse thieves. Then once you’re on the road going south, you swing over to the springs.”
“Good idea.”
“If anything happens to her—” Chisum closed his eyes and clenched his fists at his sides.
“Nothing will. Why, everyone around here loves that girl.”
Chisum nodded. He fought back the jealous rage roaring up inside him at the man’s words—“everyone loves that girl.” She didn’t belong to Monahan or any other dick who looked at her with sex on his mind; she belonged to him. God, don’t let a strand of hair on her head be mussed.
Chisum went over to the New Mexico Bank across the street. Bonham Price was a penny-ante dealer in the banking trade. His business in short loans and high-interest rates was financed by a few wealthy men in Santa Fe. Chisum had soon learned the man had shallow pockets and few guts.
“Morning, John, what brings you to town?” Bonham rushed into the lobby to greet him.
“Business,” he said as the banker in his rumpled brown suit ushered him into his office.
“Have a seat. What can I do for you?”
“I need some money sacks.”
“Money sacks.” Bonham leaned his elbows on the desktop and leaned forward.
Chisum checked around. They were alone in the small office. He turned back and began to explain his plight to the man.
“So I need moneybags to look like they are full of coins,” Chisum finished.
“My God, man, I’m sorry. You must be beside yourself. What could we use for money?” Bonham ran his hand over his clean-shaven upper lip, then wiped his mouth. “You need washers. They’re about the size of dollars, weight fairly heavy.”
“Who has that many washers?” He frowned at the banker.
“Toby down at the blacksmith shop has them. A freighter left him a keg full for his shoeing bill. Toby showed them to me the other day, said he wished they were dollars.” Bonham grinned smugly.
“How we going to get them and not draw suspicion?”
“If they’re watching you, you can’t go down there. I can. I’ll sack them up. You come down there in a half hour and get a shoe on your horse looked at. We’ll switch saddlebags then.”
“We make a bad move, they might panic and kill her.”
“You have a better plan?”
Chisum shook his head. He rose to his feet with some reluctance. Bonham’s plan beat anything he had thought of. Four bags of washers, each with some gold dollars on top—it had to work.
“I’ll go over to the mercantile and waste some time,” Chisum said.
“Good. I’ll meet you in thirty minutes at the smithy.”
“Yes,” Chisum agreed. “And Bonham, I won’t forget you and what you’re doing for me.”
“I know that, John.” Something deeper was implied in the banker’s reply. Chisum heard it and filed the matter for later. His concern for Juanita’s safety ran far deeper than the ulterior motives of some unscrupulous banker.
In a half hour, he was at the blacksmith shop. His horse hitched at the rack, he waited while the smithy finished tacking shoes on a big roan horse.
“Help you, Mr. Chisum?” the man asked, bent over at his chore.
“Want you to check the bay’s left shoe. I think it’s loose.” He looked around for Bonham. Where was the man and the money sacks?
“Be right with you.”
“Fine.” Chisum stood back, concerned where the banker might be.
When he finished and the roan’s owner paid him, the smithy in his leather apron went out and led Chisum’s horse inside.
“He took the washers to the bank by the back way. Ride up to the bank and he’ll deliver them to you out front,” the man said in a whisper. “And Mr. Chisum, I hope your niece is all right, sir.”
“Yes, thanks,” he said, and led the horse out in the sunlight to mount up.
Chisum reined up in front of the bank. As if on cue, Bonham rushed out with an armload of money sacks. Chisum dismounted, and they stowed them in his saddlebags.
“Someone is watching us,” Bonham whispered.
“Good. Who?” Chisum strapped down his side with effort to close the bulging leather pack.
“I think Indian Tom. He was at the side of the courthouse a minute ago.”
“He still watching us?”
“No, can’t see him. He must have left.”
That dirty little bastard Coyote! If he was behind her kidnapping Chisum would grind him in the dirt—grind him.
“You all right?” Bonham asked from across the saddle with concern written on his sweaty red face.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“You look sort of pale, like you have a fever.”
Chisum dismissed the man’s concern, then mounted up, thanked him, and rode out. Suspicions didn’t make the truth. But it might be time anyway to eliminate the Coyote and his bunch. The man’s usefulness might be over, and he might be causing more harm than good. Monahan could handle that chore in the line of duty.
Out of town at last and on the road south, Chisum reached for his crotch and shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. The deep stone ache made him nauseated. He needed to find her and restore her to his house. He rose in the stirrups with a hard wince at the deep discomfort in his crotch, and set the horse in a long trot.