The Fire of Greed by Bill Yenne Read Free Book Online Page A

and over that way.”
    â€œI couldn’t agree more; they would definitely not have gone through Socorro,” Cole said with a smile, taking out some coins to pay for his coffee, and for some beans and cornmeal that he figured he would need. “I’m much obliged for your help.”
    * * *
    CLIMBING OUT OF THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY, WITH ITS small cultivated fields of corn and squash, took a traveler back into the same dry, arid desert landscape that existed to the east of the river. The only difference was that the terrain now grew steeper and more rugged. Several days’ ride in the distance, deeper into the wilderness, there were taller mountains, wooded with ponderosa like the Rockies of Colorado and Montana, but in the interim, a traveler was still in the desert.
    Here and there along the lightly traveled trail, Cole detected the tracks of the two men and their livestock, and he could see that their pace had slowed considerably. Either they had come to feel that they had eluded all potential pursuers and had grown more relaxed, or they were becoming gradually more tired. Probably, Cole reasoned, it was a combination of the two.
    Gradually, their urgency and their alertness was waning. Several boring days on the trail does that to a man, whether he realizes it or not. Like the two men whom he had pursued south of Durango, these two had started out edgy, certainly edgy enough to spitefully murder two of their own. Gradually, though, that edge was being worn down.
    As he paused to water the roan at a trickle of water coming off the slopes of the Magdalenas, he imagined the bandits looking back, and perhaps seeing him. Unless they had seen him following them over the past few days, he guessed that they would not be unduly wary of a single man on an existing trail. They could catch their breath up there wherever, confident that the imagined posse had been successfully eluded.
    As he climbed the trail, Cole took the two Denver & Rio Grande passes out of his pocket and studied them. They were standard issue railroad passes such as he had seen from time to time. All railroads issued them to employees to use for official business and for personal use as part of their compensation. It was clear that either these were the property of the deceased, or they had been left on the bodies deliberately.
    * * *
    SANTA RITA WAS A LARGER SETTLEMENT THAN HE HAD imagined, even boasting a small cantina.
    Cole studied the few horses tied at the hitchrails. He had not expected to see three saddle horses tethered near a pair of mules, and he was not disappointed. He was pleased, however, to see no horse at all tied at the cantina, despite its rail being situated in the inviting shade of a cottonwood. This meant that his conversation with the bartender would be uninterrupted.
    â€œHowdy,” the proprietor said, greeting Cole from his position in a chair near the bar. “What can we do to brighten your day?”
    â€œA whiskey would work itself a long way down the road of making that happen,” Cole said, packing more words into the sentence than was typical of his usual greeting. It was his intention to establish himself as a conversationalist.
    The man stood, swatted at a fly, and went behind the bar.
    â€œYou’re a long way from home,” the man said, taking his own turn to establish himself as a conversationalist.
    â€œHow’d you guess?” Cole asked.
    â€œBecause you ain’t from around here,” the man said with a crazed chuckle as he poured two fingers of inviting amber liquid into a glass. “And Santa Rita is damned far from
everywhere
.”
    Cole could not help but smile as the man laughed boisterously at his own joke. Cole guessed that it was not the first time he had used that line.
    â€œYou guessed right,” Cole said, savoring the welcome taste.
    â€œWhere you headed?” the man asked.
    â€œWest,” Cole answered, nodding in that direction.