Chapter 24

“LET’S JUST SPLIT IT TWO WAYS,” JASPER GARDNER PROMISED, OFFERING the same arrangement he had unsuccessfully proposed to ben muriday and the late Simon Lynch. “Don’t even have to be three ways. You can have half.”

As with the previous negotiation, this idea fell on deaf ears. After a night of wrathful bickering between the two, mainly concerning Gardner’s failure to include Gabe Stanton in his escape attempt, Bladen Cole had just turned to ignoring them.

After a week and a half on the trail, Cole finally had his prisoners in tow, with less than a day’s ride ahead of him. As he neared the conclusion of this affair, however, the only thought that seemed to have staying power in his mind was the nightmare image of the face of the rat-faced man who had shot his brother.

Even as the sun rose into the day, and the heat of the New Mexico summer made its presence felt, the cold chill of the night before remained. Seeing that face, that unmistakable face, in the mixture of firelight and moonlight made it seem in his mind’s memory like a ghostly apparition, like that of the inhuman ghoul, which he had always imagined the rat-faced man to be.

Bladen Cole had seen his worst recurring nightmare—and it was real.

In the distance, Cole could see a group of men and horses. They had a wagon and were removing a number of medium-sized crates. Strange, it seemed, that they should be unloading a wagon way out here.

As he and his caravan of fugitives approached, he watched the men start to set up a tripod. By the time that he approached close enough to read the words ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE RAILROAD written across side of the wagon, they were installing a surveyor’s transit on the tripod.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Cole said as he approached them.

“Good morning to you, sir,” one of the men replied.

“I can tell by your cargo that there’s a railroad coming,” Cole commented, making conversation. His tone carried a tinge of dry irony, given that nearly everyone in the territory was aware of the arrival of the rails.

“That would be an accurate assessment, sir,” the man said with a sense of pride of accomplishment in the tone of his voice. “We’ll have the route into Bernalillo surveyed by month’s end. After that, it’s up to the work gangs.”

“That’ll be a big change to this country,” Cole said, thinking back to the vast open spaces through which he had ridden over the past week.

“Folks’ll be able to ride as far in an hour as a man on horseback can ride in a day,” the man said proudly.

“I guess that’ll make gettin’ around a lot faster,” Cole said. “Hope folks can figure out what to do with all that extra time.”

“Looks like you got yourself some cargo of your own,” the man said.

“These fellows have a rendezvous with the law, and I’m helping them in that direction.”

“They look a little worse for wear,” the man said, looking at the purplish-pink hue of Gardner’s face and the bandage on Stanton’s sleeveless arm.

“They lived a hard life over the past few days before they came into my care this morning,” Cole said and smiled.

“You wouldn’t have got your pretty face all busted up if you ain’t got yourself on the losing end of a fight with that woman,” Stanton interjected, unable to ignore a chance to get in a verbal jab against his estranged partner.

“Shut your damned mouth,” Gardner shouted, indignant at being constantly reminded that he had come to a draw in a fight with a member of the female species. “If I weren’t all tied up, I’d kill you with my bare hands.”

“Like to see you try!”

“They’re a lively pair,” the surveyor said with a smile.

“That’s why I’m real anxious to be done with ’em,” Cole replied.

* * *

“MR. WALDRON,” THE MAN SAID, COMING INTO THE RAILROAD OFFICES IN SANTA FE. “I’VE GOT SOME NEWS YOU’RE gonna want to hear.”

“What’s that?” Waldron said, looking up at Nathaniel Siward, who functioned as his courier, aide, and all-around right-hand man.

“We just got word from out where the survey crew is working,” Siward explained. “There’s a stranger riding this way with a couple of pack mules that have packs marked ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE. He’s also got a couple of men all tied up and he says he’s taking them to the law in Santa Fe.”

Waldron knew immediately that his bounty hunter was finally returning. He wondered how three or four fugitives had become two, but he imagined there had been some gunplay involved.

“Thanks for letting me know,” Waldron said, standing up and reaching for his jacket. “Now hightail it back down yonder and find this man. Tell him that Ezra Waldron wants to meet him and his cargo at my office down by Lamy. Use my name. I know this man. His name is Bladen Cole.”

Waldron was amazed that the bounty hunter had prevailed. With the passage of a week and then some, the railroad man had assumed that he would never see Cole again. If it had been him, Waldron mused, he would have been strongly tempted to take the cash and keep going, rather than to return it for a lesser amount. As Waldron had once observed, honorable men were a rarity in the West. Of course, they were rarer still in the financial circles in the East.

With a quick glance at the wall clock, he made a beeline for the offices of the Santa Fe New Mexican.

“Is Tobias in today?” Waldron asked.

“You’re in luck, he just came in,” reported the man at the front desk. “I’ll go fetch him.”

Waldron found himself pacing and listening to the clip-clop of the wall clock pendulum as he waited for the columnist. Three minutes passed, and then five.

“Mr. Waldron,” Gough said in a jovial tone as he emerged from an inner office. “Pleasure to see you. To what do I owe the pleasure? It’s still a trifle early for you to take me to lunch.”

“I have something that you’ll find to satisfy your appetite more happily than a steak at Delmonico’s,” Waldron said. “I have a news item for you, a ‘scoop’ as they say nowadays.”

“My ears are all yours,” Gough said, stifling an overt display of eagerness.

“I’d like you to join me in taking a little ride down to Lamy,” Waldron insisted.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Now? I have a—”

“You’ll want this story.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll fill you in on the details,” Waldron promised. “But we must go at once.”

* * *

THE FARTHER COLE RODE WITH HIS DISHEVELED CARAVAN of outlaws and gold, the more he saw of the work crews of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. There were men with teams of horses grading the roadbed, and wagons loaded with rock and gravel to level the ground ahead of those who were grading. At one place, they were constructing a wooden bridge across a small arroyo.

There were so many men and horses coming and going that he almost did not notice a rider coming in his direction at a gallop. Nor did he notice, until the man was but a short distance away, that he was coming to meet him.

“Mr. Cole? Bladen Cole?” asked the stranger.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Nathaniel Siward,” he replied. “Mr. Waldron . . . Ezra Waldron . . . sent me to meet you.”

“That was nice of him,” Cole said.

“Mr. Waldron asked me to come out here to take you to meet him at the construction headquarters over by Lamy. He has an office there.”

“How far is that?”

“Less than an hour. It’s closer than Santa Fe.”

Cole nodded that he would follow Siward. His suspicions had initially been aroused, but the man looked like someone who carried messages for a man like Waldron—and he was not carrying a gun.

“How’d he know I was out this way?” Cole asked as they rode.

“One of the crews reported that they had seen you,” Siward said. “With two men tied to their saddle horns and pack saddles carrying railroad markings, you gotta admit that you stand out.”

“Reckon we do,” Cole said with a smile and a glance back at his tattered prisoners. “He say anything else?”

“Just that he seemed pretty sure that you were Bladen Cole and that he wanted to meet you at Lamy. He did seem surprised . . . and pleased to hear about you coming.”