Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (37 page)

“Ain't he gonna start to smell if we don't bury him, Lieutenant?” one of them asked.

“Not in this cold, sojur,” Seamus answered, shivering.

“Snow's coming—soon,” Jack said, smelling the air. “You want the man buried in the morning, Lieutenant?”

In turn the officer looked at Simon Pierce. “Mr. Pierce—are we to bury your companion here before we pull away in the morning?”

He was a few moments in answering, finally dropping the limp hand of William Graves. “By all means, Lieutenant. We'll give him a decent burial here … in this wild country where we had both hoped to make the discovery that would rock the civilized world.”

“You heard the man,” Stanton said to his soldiers. “Wrap the body up and we'll bury it in the morning. And the rest of you, back to sleep. Damn, if it doesn't feel like winter itself is coming down on us at that.”

Chapter 28

Mid-November 1873

Graves was mad … raving mad.

Although his face didn't grow distorted there at the last, in the cold, winter darkness beside the glowing coals of the fire—although he did not rant and rave like a lunatic … Graves was mad nonetheless.

Simon Pierce was sure of it. As sure of it as he had ever been of anything.

Oh, for sure Graves was an intelligent being—very likely savvy enough to control the creeping, incipient insanity. That's the only reason he hadn't appeared or sounded crazy there at the last.

Perhaps it was only what he had told Pierce that was crazy. Yet what he said with that wild, consumed look in his eye proved that the cartographer was downright insane.

But Simon didn't need the map expert any longer. As much as he had watched Graves brooding over the fragile Castilian parchment, as much as Graves himself had innocently and stupidly shared all the map's secrets with Pierce—Simon no longer needed Graves along. If things had turned out differently, there would have been more than enough to divide between the two of them. But now, with Graves unwittingly providing his own untimely exit, Simon Pierce found himself center stage at this singular moment in history, no longer compelled to share with any man the limelight, the fortune, and the ultimate in raw power that would come from that treasure.

Who knows? Simon Pierce thought to himself as they rolled through the growing darkness of midday, marching northwest on a course away from Fort Richardson and Jacksboro, where Lieutenant Stanton and the others had wanted to go after the prairie fire—marching away from the safety of the settlements … north by west because Pierce ordered the party to continue its march across the Llano Estacado.

Yes, he thought. Indeed, there have been rumors of great distress in Mexico. Perhaps they are ready for a benevolent leader—one who can buy his own army and navy, a presidente who will not take any guff from the big bully to the north. Perhaps the time was right, the stars in alignment, the fates smiling on him—everything ready to make a very wealthy American the president of Mexico and, who could say? Perhaps with a well-paid army and navy, El President Pierce could reach out and absorb the riches of Central America as well.

Why stop there? He could easily defeat the ignorant Indians of South America with his unstoppable military. By then there could be no telling how much power one man might hold.

Money was power, he knew. And by controlling the world's greatest wealth, Simon Pierce just might possess the greatest power in the world.

“Are you warm enough, Mr. Pierce?”

“What?” he asked, surprised, of the lieutenant who had ridden back to the rattling wagon crowded with soldiers, their dwindling rations and camp supplies. “Oh, yes. Thank you. Warm enough.”

Simon found the eyes of the soldiers in the wagon glaring at him. Indeed, he was the warmest, having selected the softest spot among the bedrolls for himself. The rest squatted precariously atop campaign gear while he was rocked in the lap of luxury. At least enough luxury that the dropping temperature and icy flakes lancing down from the lead-belly sky bothered him very little. He could tell the rest of the soldiers were miserable. Perhaps it was time to spread some cheer.

“Thank you for your words over William's grave this morning, private,” he said to the young soldier squatting to his left. “I was most happy you remembered so many kind thoughts and scriptures to repeat over his final resting place.”

The soldier sniffled, his nose red in the angry wind. “My mama taught me the bible at her knee. Likely I've heard the burial service said over and over again more times than I have years, Mr. Pierce. But you've no need to thank me—every man deserves to have the proper words said over his mortal remains.”

“Yes—dust to dust … ashes to ashes,” he sighed thoughtfully. “We are all but temporary wayfarers, aren't we?”

The young soldier never did answer his poetic flight, but looked away instead, resuming his watch of the darkening sky churning out of the north with the others.

To hell with you then, soldier, Pierce thought. Let them believe what they will. Any of them—including those two civilians. Especially that big Irishman. There was no way any judge or court of law could convince a jury that Simon Pierce had killed William Graves with anything but the most humane intentions … simply to ease a troubled and fellow wayfarer from this earthly veil, at his own request. And besides, who was there who could testify to, much less prove, that William Graves hadn't begged Simon Pierce to shoot him—to put him out of his great and unfortunate misery?

Certainly not that Irishman who Pierce sensed was suspicious, and therefore clearly enough a threat. Perhaps not even that young Stillwell, who, while quiet, showed great distrust in his eyes for how Pierce had explained the killing.

It mattered little now—for after William's burial, Pierce had ordered Lieutenant Stanton to turn about and head northwest once more—against the protests of both Stillwell and Donegan. Simon was not about to be deterred now—and if that meant placing the two guides under military arrest, he would see to that in the days to come.

Low food supply? Nothing more than an inconvenience. Simply have the soldiers find some game in this veritably unpopulated countryside. There were clearly no Indians to be found, Indians scaring off the animals. Stanton's soldiers could surely find game enough to sustain the party.

What of the incoming storm? Listen to the carping! Were they not soldiers? Simon had jeered. Did they not have tents, bedrolls and the wherewithal to survive in all conditions of nature?

No, for all the protests Stillwell and Donegan raised, Pierce had answered them in due course. He was, after all, much smarter than they. Oh, either one of them might have more experiential knowledge of the land and its native inhabitants, and possess more of the requisite survival skills. But nonetheless, Simon Pierce was clear and away much smarter than either of those bumpkins.

The lieutenant and his men were soldiers, trained to take orders from their superiors—and Simon was clearly the superior mind remaining in the party now … what with William's unfortunate tangle with that hydrophobic skunk. With the lieutenant and his obedient troopers allied behind him, Pierce had only to concern himself with the two guides. They were the unknowns, the variable factors to this great scientific expedition. They were ultimately the men Pierce had to monitor most closely.

Those two … yes, and keeping the discovery of the treasure a secret until he could find its exact location, return to Jacksboro where he would hire on an entire team of laborers who would be protected by a mercenary army Pierce would enlist and bring along to make sure none of the wealth slipped through his fingers.

No, William Graves might have been many things … he might even have been raving mad there at the end—but there was surely one small piece of his sanity the man clung to with all his might right down to the bloody end.

Graves realized he was slipping, like a man on a mud-soaked slope, with no place to dig in his toes, nowhere to claw with his hands. Graves realized it—felt compelled to tell Simon about the blood money he had paid to acquire a small piece of the treasure from a Mexican Comanchero, a bandit who had murdered a Tonkawa guide for it, who in turn had killed a Kiowa warrior for the small but heavy treasure that now rested in the dirty scrap of corduroy Graves said it was wrapped in when he had struck his bargain with the Comanchero.

Only moments before Pierce had killed Graves, the cartographer had explained how, in his putting the pieces of the old Spanish puzzle together, he had spent more than two years sniffing around in Mexico, and finally came up with the band of Comancheros who knew something of the ancient legends about El Llano Estacado. With the wealth of the Graves family, William had promised one of the bandits a small fortune for that single piece of treasure two men had already died for.

When Graves finally had the treasure in his hands, and the Mexican bandit had his money, the two marksmen and bodyguards William had hired killed the Comanchero. No mess. And no great expenditure of his family's wealth. And William Graves had one of the last pieces needed in the great Castilian puzzle.

But now Simon had to grin with the thought, four men had paid with blood for this piece of the unimaginable treasure to come this close to returning home. First the aging Kiowa warrior who had originally owned the sacred object, handed down to him through six generations of warriors. Then in turn the Tonkawa and the Comanchero bandit … and finally William Graves. Every last one of them had been killed for their silence. More men might need to be murdered perhaps—to assure their tongues would never wag.

The Spanish had come halfway around the world to claim the riches of the New World as their own: Indian gold.

Simon Pierce stuffed a cold hand inside the flaps of his wool coat, feeling beneath his fingers the reassuring firmness of the treasure he had taken from William's effects—still wrapped in that scrap of gray-brown corduroy, and now safely ensconced under Simon's shirt.

A bar of it: not much bigger than the width of his palm. Smooth and hard, and heavy as a brick.

Indian gold—said to be taken right from the tall, gleaming walls of Coronado's fabled Seven Cities of Cibola.

*   *   *

Winter Man must be very angry with The People.

There was no other explanation that Quanah Parker could think of as he struggled to keep his pony pointed in the right direction. It struggled against the rein, wanting to quarter to the wind, bringing its rump around. But that would mean he and the warriors would not find their village in the fading light here at midday with the dark clouds sodden with ice and snow looming over the nearby hills. Ever closer.

Already it was the beginning of the Moon of Deer Shedding Horns. A season grown old with cold and stiff muscles.

They had been moving in a slow, lazy arc ever since leaving the village more than a moon ago. Quanah led all those young warriors who wanted to make one last ride before winter squeezed down hard on the land. It was even more of a struggle now to control the pony than it had been when they had set the grassfires before the wind many suns ago.

Oh, to have that warmth now as Winter Man's angry breath howled out of the north.

Quanah's scouts had come back to the main party with word they had discovered a small band of soldiers and a handful of other white men riding northwest across the Staked Plain.

“How many is small?” Quanah had asked.

The young scout held up his five fingers, then struck that right hand across his left forearm three times.

The Kwahadi chief had peered over his warriors, almost ten-times-ten of them, all wrapped in blankets or robes, their hair streaming in the wind. Each one of them anxious for coups. Many howled in disappointment when he told them there was no honor in wiping out the small band of yellowlegs.

“But what of the white hide hunters we have killed, whenever we run across them in Kwahadi buffalo country?” asked one of the older warriors.

“They are something different,” he had explained. “Something evil. I will always kill the hide hunters who come only to slaughter the buffalo and take food from the mouths of our families.”

“How can you be sure these yellowlegs do not mean trouble?” asked one of the others.

“
Aiyeee!
Let us kill them quickly, Quanah!” said a third.

“Yes! We can always use more soldier guns,” said another.

“No—whenever we attack the yellowlegs, they always send more,” Quanah had explained solidly. “Don't you remember the lessons taught you yet? The soldiers always come, always. It is not they who are the problem now. It is the hide hunter who comes out of the north. Not the yellowlegs who come from the south and east.”

“Then let us make sport with them!” a warrior demanded.

Another howled, “Good—we can scare them and turn their pants to water!”

Quanah had waited while they all had their laugh. “Perhaps we can scare them—but not by attacking them. The soldier guns shoot far and they can shoot straight. We might have fun, meaning only to give them a good scare … but the yellowlegs will not know that, and one of you might be killed—all for a little fun? No,” he told them. “We will only scare them away. Drive them back east, where they belong and are to stay.”

“How do we do this?”

Quanah had turned to the young warrior and said, “We will build a fire—between us and the soldiers. The wind at our backs will drive the flames toward them.”

“A big fire?” asked another excitedly.

“Yes—it is late in the season and the buffalo have gone south. Make this a big fire and let's see how well the soldiers run from it. Perhaps a wild thing like a prairie fire will turn their bowels to water and make them cry for their mothers!”

“Hi-yi! Hi-yi!” they yipped in excitement, worked into a lather to set the flames that eventually spread across countless miles as the horsemen carried firebrands both north and south, igniting the grassland sucked dry of moisture with autumn's arid winds.