Chapter 39
BLADEN COLE HAD FOLLOWED THE RAT-FACED MAN AS HE parted company with the railroad man and headed down a street leading away from the Plaza. Walking past a theater, Muriday paused. Through the window, a well-illuminated lobby could be seen, but the doors were closed. A check of his father’s pocket watch compared to the time posted on the marquee, told Cole that the evening’s performance of The Tragedie of Macbeth had begun nearly forty minutes before.
It seemed incongruous to see a man like Muriday studying the marquee of a theater, and stepping onto the boardwalk to scrutinize the posters. Cole had not taken the rat-faced man to be someone with an interest in Shakespeare.
Cole had never seen a Shakespeare play himself, although he recalled having been compelled to read one or two in school. Perhaps he would have been obliged to read more had the war not come around the time that he entered his teens. There was little room for much more than reading, writing, and ’rithmatic—if that—with a war raging within earshot of your classroom.
Cole watched Muriday linger for a long time then scurry away as a small number of people emerged for the intermission. The way that the rat-faced man eyed the crowd and the doorway told Cole that the remaining loose end was attending the theater tonight.
Some of the well-dressed men lit hand-rolled cigarettes, and everyone glanced at the sky, which was now pitch-black and still rumbling ominously. The first heavy splats of rain now began hitting the ground, and the people hastened back inside.
The doors were closed, and the rain began to pour.
Cole nestled himself into the shadow of a protected alcove and saw Muriday do the same across the street. As he watched the rat-faced man, the rat-faced man continued to watch the doors.
Who was the loose end?
Cole wondered if it might be Ezra Waldron himself. Had the railroad learned of his association with its rival and decided to dispose of the traitor?
Alternately, was the traitor aiming to remove yet another impediment to his scheme? Could it be Joseph Ames?
The rain came down with furious intensity for a long while but stopped as quickly as it had begun. The roar of the torrent impacting roofs and streets was replaced with the sounds of water dripping from eaves and rushing through downspouts.
The air was suddenly filled with that freshness that always follows a desert storm.
Cole chose this moment to leave his narrow sanctuary. His goal was to circle the block, to position himself on the same side of the street as Muriday, and there to confront him.
Circling the block took longer than he’d expected, but at last he entered the narrow alley that led directly to his quarry. He could see Muriday ahead, silhouetted against the glow of kerosene lights that lined the street.
* * *
AS THE LIGHTS CAME UP AT THE END OF THE PLAY AND THE audience moved into the reception hall for brandy and sweets, both Ezra Waldron and Nicolette de la Gravière were in somber moods. After all, as Nicolette had told her mother that afternoon, Macbeth is such a gloomy play.
“You don’t look well, Ezra,” she said, imagining her own expression was not one of buoyant cheerfulness.
“A little upset in my stomach,” he admitted. “Nothing a glass of seltzer wouldn’t remedy.”
“How did you find the play?” she asked as he handed her a sparkling water. “You were looking very engrossed all evening.”
“Was I?”
“You were,” she said, catching herself smiling at his nervousness.
“I found it a reminder of the dangerous times in which we live,” he said. “A reminder of how little society has changed since the Dark Ages.”
Waldron looked into her eyes and wished for everything else to go away. It seemed so unreal that this beautiful young woman would not live to see another sunrise. Her relaxed demeanor suggested that perhaps she might not have perceived the letter and the brokerage statement as an indictment—but just random business correspondence. He wished that circumstances were different, but he was single-minded in his determination that his own self-preservation trumped any other emotion or distraction. He could take no chances.
“Shall we?” Waldron said at last, and they stepped out into the New Mexico evening.
The rainstorm that had threatened earlier had come and gone, and with it went the unsettled rumbling in the clouds.
It was a clear, cool night, with that freshness that comes to the desert after a rain shower. Beyond the flickering kerosene lamps, a few stars twinkled. Beyond the area immediately surrounding the theater, few people were about on the streets.
“Lovely evening,” Nicolette said, because it seemed to be the right thing to say.
“That it is,” Waldron said nervously.
“You need to relax,” she said. “You’re so tense. The play was just a play, and the play is over.”
“The play is over . . .” he repeated, letting his voice trail off.
They walked in silence for a few moments.
She knew the nature of his darkness, and she was growing more and more angry with herself for playing the role of a naive companion. It was, she decided, time to confirm her suspicions about the contents of the letter.
* * *
AS HE MOVED THROUGH THE ALLEY, CAREFULLY AND QUIETLY, BLADEN COLE WAS STARTLED TO HEAR VOICES OUT on the street. The production had ended, and people were leaving the theater. His eyes were fixed on the alcove where Muriday was. Cole had hoped to get to him before the crowd appeared, but he would now have to make the best of the circumstances.
Closer he came.
Thirty feet.
Fifteen feet.
* * *
OUT ON THE STREET, NICOLETTE WAS READY TO SAY SOMETHING TO WALDRON, TO PROBE THE CONUNDRUM OF THE letter, when she heard a scraping sound to her left and sensed the presence of someone emerging from the darkness.
She turned to see the most frightening of apparitions, more real and more tangible than any evil that had been conjured up within the theater.
The man’s face, with its closely spaced eyes and exaggerated nose, its dreadful appearance sharpened in contrast by the shadows cast from nearby gaslights, was like a hideous, ugly mask that disappeared into his collar without a chin.
Most terrifying of all was the gun which he held.
Its muzzle was pointed straight at her face.
* * *
BLADEN COLE WAS ONE STEP AWAY FROM CALLING OUT TO Muriday when he saw the man raise his gun and step forward.
In the lamplight beyond the silhouette of the gunman, he saw Nicolette de la Gravière on the arm of Ezra Waldron.
Cole’s immediate thought was that he had been correct in his assumption that Waldron himself had become the loose end.
However, when Waldron pushed free of Nicolette’s hand on his arm and scrambled away, Muriday’s gun did not follow him.
Instead, it remained pointed at Nicolette’s terrified face.
“Muriday!” Cole shouted so loud that a sharp pain stung his vocal cords.
The man turned quickly, the muzzle of his Colt now trained on Bladen Cole.
K’pow-tzing!
The sounds of the gunshot and of the bullet whisking past Cole’s cheek came as one.
Cole looked into the hideous face of the rat-faced man, grotesquely distorted by the streetlights and made yet more monstrous in Cole’s mind by ten years of accumulated emotions which now surged over the bounty hunter like a tidal wave.
K’pow!
The bullet caught the rat-faced man in the right shoulder, effectively rendering his gun arm useless. The orders issued by Muriday’s conscious brain demanded that a finger squeeze a trigger, but the message could not get through.
The weight of 250 grains of lead knocked Muriday off balance, and he toppled to the ground.
“This,” Cole told him, as he aimed his own Colt at the man, “is for William Cole, gunned down by you in Silver City ten years back.”
Muriday looked up pitifully through the excruciating pain.
Cole hoped that Muriday remembered that night down in Silver City. He could not know that the memory of that gunfight was among Muriday’s last thoughts, but he could read in the rat-faced man’s narrow-spaced eyes, that he did realize tonight’s gunfight had been his last.
Cole saw the rapidly growing pool of darkness beneath Muriday’s shoulder and knew that an artery had been nicked and the man did not have long to live. Cole lowered his gun and was in the midst of holstering it when he felt himself slammed by a force that nearly knocked him off balance.
In an instant, Cole realized that he was enveloped in the embrace of Nicolette de la Gravière.
He looked down into the tears flowing from those beautiful dark eyes, and heard the lips the color of chilies tell him:
“You saved my life!”
Her arms clung to him with an urgent, almost desperate, strength. He felt that he had no choice but to wrap his own arms around her.
She closed her eyes and placed a warm, moist kiss on his cheek.
Her eyes flickered open, then quickly closed.
The lips the color of chilies met his own, and time stopped.