The Fire of Greed Read Online Free PDF Page B

first, probably taken by surprise. The other man had started running and had been hit in the shoulder before suffering a fatal shot.
    The bounty hunter rolled him over and started going through his pockets for personal effects that would be useful later in making an identification. He found a letter, handwritten in a woman’s hand, which he pocketed without reading and a pass of the kind that were issued to railroad employees. It was from the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. The man also had two silver dollars in his pocket.
    A search of the other body yielded another Denver & Rio Grande pass and a pocket watch slightly smaller than the one Cole he himself carried. There was less than a dollar’s worth of coins in the man’s pocket. Cole left these, but kept the watch and the two passes.
    Ezra Waldron had been swift to dismiss any complicity by the rival railroad, yet apparently that railroad, or at least two of its employees, was somehow involved. On one level, Cole was pleased to have seen the cocky Waldron’s assumption disproved; on another, he wondered what this meant.
    He allowed himself about fifteen minutes of exertion to try to cover the bodies with boulders before he started out again. It was a fool’s errand, he thought. Even if the buzzards were deterred, the coyotes could dig under the rocks—if they were feeling ambitious. Still, there was something in his nature that insisted all humans deserved the dignity of at least an
attempt
at a decent burial.
    As he carried rocks, Cole wondered about the railroad passes.
    Had these thieves really been Denver & Rio Grande men?
    Was the railroad itself behind the robbery?
    If the latter, why had the men fled south, rather than heading north to the Denver & Rio Grande stronghold in Colorado?
    Why had these two been murdered by their accomplices?
    Probably it was the oldest reason in the book—nine grand split two ways is worth twice as much as when it’s split four ways.
    * * *
    THE WESTERN SKY WAS TURNING THE COLOR OF A BUTTERNUT squash when he finally came upon a cluster of vegetation that marked the presence of a spring. Smelling the water, his roan practically galloped to the thin trickle. When he dismounted, Cole lay facedown, submerging his face up to his ears as the roan slurped.
    After refilling his canteens and resting his horse for a while, Cole pressed on, intending to use all of the daylight that he was offered before camping for the night.
    The demise of the two men would improve the odds for Cole when he finally caught up with the survivors, but in the meantime, it gave them each two saddled horses to trade off as mounts.
    It grew cooler as the sun waned. A breeze fluttered and crackled through the dry sagebrush. The roan wheezed with what seemed to be a sigh of relief.
    Cole studied the horizon with his spyglass. Far in the distance, in generally the same direction as the tracks were leading, he saw a cluster of lights.
    He reached the tiny settlement shortly after the sun had set, and darkness began to envelop the land.
    â€œ
Has visto gringo viajeros pasan por este lugar?
” Bladen Cole asked when a kid emerged from one of the buildings. He hoped that he had not butchered the Spanish too badly in asking whether the gringos had come this way. Without speaking, the boy gestured toward the west.
    â€œCuándo?”
    In reply to Cole’s wanting to know when, the boy indicated that it had been when the sun was still in the top of the sky.
    â€œ
Muchas gracias
,” Cole said, touching a finger to the brim of his hat.
    The bandits had now turned toward the Rio Grande, as Cole had expected they would.
    * * *
    BLADEN COLE AWOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO THE sound of a cactus wren chortling near his head. The sun was not quite up, but the dawn was vast and the view of the purple-hued desert landscape was spectacular.
    A moonless night swallows the desert quickly in her black velvet glove, so Cole had