The Fire of Greed Read Online Free PDF

restlessness.
    He drifted up into Wyoming and into Montana Territory, following the trails of malefactors and collecting bounties. Last winter, when the snows were beginning to blow down across the plains from the Arctic, he had chased three criminals north of the Marias River into Blackfeet country.
    The farther he roamed, the more he thought he was putting New Mexico behind him.
    Now, he was
back
.
    Maybe it was the inevitability of fate.

Chapter 4

    FROM FLATTENED BOTTOMS THE SHAPE AND COLOR OF anvils, dark purple-gray and menacing, the cumulus clouds billowed upward into downy tops the color and shape of cotton exploding from its bolls. They reminded Bladen Cole of the fields of his boyhood home, so distant in both time and space, in old Virginia.
    He took a cautious sip from his canteen and hoped that he and the roan would cross paths with a spring, or even a year-round stream, pretty soon.
    Cole took out the gold pocket watch that had once belonged to his father, wound it, and checked the time. He had been on the trail of the four men and their livestock for more than a day now, and the tracks showed no signs of their having slackened their pace. Indeed, they no doubt knew that haste was their only protection from the posse they had every reason to believe was in pursuit.
    He scanned the surrounding mesas, shimmering in the dry heat of the mid-afternoon sun. In a landscape in which even the snakes and lizards had sought the shade, his eyes fell upon a cluster of black specks near the southern horizon.
    He took out his small brass spyglass to get a closer look. Buzzards were circling the death site of some unlucky creature, probably a black-tailed deer that had been nailed by a cougar overnight. It probably had been killed at a watering hole, which gave Cole hope that he could soon water the roan.
    Over the course of the next hour, Cole drew ever closer to the circling, scavenging birds. From time to time, one or two would dive, while others would climb into the sky. They were taking turns picking at the carcass.
    At last, he crested a small ridge and gazed down at the clusters of buzzards.
    There was no spring, and no deer. The birds were pecking away at two human bodies.
    Cole looked around, straining his eyes to see whether there was any additional sign of people in the vicinity.
    As he rode wide of the place where the bodies lay, he found the tracks that he had been following, as they continued south from the death scene. There were four sets of horseshoe tracks, and two of mule shoes. His initial supposition that the four men had been ambushed by the Apache was contradicted by the continued orderliness of the trail. An Apache attack would have scattered the horses, and they had not been scattered.
    When he returned to examine the scene, he found the scavengers well into their meal.
    He approached the first body, which was lying faceup near the charred embers of a fire. He shooed away the buzzards, who complained with raspy voices before reconvening at the second body some distance away.
    Cole knelt to examine the remains. The eyes are usually the first to go, and there was little left of the face. It was a grisly sight not for the faint of heart, but Cole had seen worse.
    There was a large hole in the forehead, which the buzzards had used to their advantage. Cole kicked the head to one side and saw a bullet hole in the back of skull. The hole in the forehead was the exit wound. The man had been shot in the back of the head at close range, probably while sitting and facing the fire.
    He walked to the other body, which lay facedown about thirty yards away. Once again, he interrupted the late lunch of a cluster of angry birds. There was evidence that this man had been shot in the left shoulder and in the back several times. It was hard to tell exactly how many times because of the way that the buzzards had been picking at the body.
    Piecing things together, Cole surmised that the man at the campfire had been shot