Death Comes

by Sue Hallgarth

  Agent Dan moaned but remained more or less unconscious until Doc Martin finished, and even then Dan hadn’t been able to tell them much. He kept passing out. He’ll be himself by morning, Doc promised, though it’ll be at least a day before he’s up and around. He’s strong and Amelia’s good food will do the trick. Just feed him and let him sleep. Best medicine there is.

  And sleep Agent Dan did. Spud volunteered to stay with him through the night. He knew nothing about wounds or the wounded. But he stayed all the same, just in case. Just before dawn Agent Dan’s moans grew louder and he tried to sit up. Spud had to hold him down while telling him he would be all right soon.

  At first Agent Dan didn’t seem to understand why he wouldn’t be all right right now, but then his pain must have kicked in and he fell back against the pillows. What happened, Spud and Agent Dan asked each other in unison. Then Agent Dan began to remember. In snippets.

  Agent Dan still did not seem to remember everything, certainly not in chronological order, but he did remember that he had been shot. He had counted several rifle shots but couldn’t return fire because special agents were never armed. And he saw no place to take cover. When the searing pain hit, it sent him sprawling. Two riders stopped to make sure he was dead. One of them kicked him so hard in the ribs it was all he could do to roll with the kick and stay loose. Play dead, he chanted in his mind, play dead. One rode a bay, the other a sorrel. The one on the bay had a beard, a dark beard. He couldn’t see the sorrel rider’s face. Then he passed out.

  “Pain,” Agent Dan whispered now.

  “Take it easy. You’ll be all right.” Spud put his hand on Agent Dan’s good shoulder and repeated it over and over. Agent Dan’s shoulder felt warm and solid to the touch. Agent Dan really would be all right, Spud decided, despite the fact his face was so pale each whisker stood clearly delineated. Spud admired the strength of that jaw. When Agent Dan slipped back into his own oblivion, Spud sat with his hand on Agent Dan’s shoulder until an hour before dawn, when Amelia patted Spud on the back and sent him off to get coffee.

  Spud never failed to take Amelia’s advice or her coffee. He carried a large cup to his little office where he could kick off his boots and lean back in his desk chair and smoke his pipe. His chair rocked comfortably on its hind legs. Spud sat quietly at his desk, savoring what was left of his coffee and rubbing Jamie, one of Mabel’s resident cats, with his big toe. Jamie rolled over and stretched in obvious pleasure.

  Spud pulled out a Big Chief tablet and prepared to jot notes in two columns. One he labeled Know, the other Need to Know. He stared at the headings for several minutes before he wrote under Know, Three Women Dead and then Two Decapitated. Below that line he wrote Mexicans. Next, Shallow Graves on Trail Near Arroyo Seco. Finally, Small Cross.

  Spud paused to think whether he had left anything out.

  Jamie loved belly rubs almost as much as Spud loved Amelia’s coffee. Both helped Spud think. But this whole business was just too much. What did he know about women and murder? He knew words, that’s what he knew. Prose, satire, poetry. Give him words and he could do anything.

  But human decapitation? No. He felt queasy just thinking about it. Mexican women? Well, he knew something about Mexico. During his months there with Hal and the Lawrences he had absorbed as much of the culture and history of the place as he could. Which meant, Spud caught himself mid-thought, that he had learned a great deal about Mexican men, especially young Mexican men. Hal saw to that, one of the reasons Spud had chosen to break it off with Hal and move to Taos. But Spud knew almost nothing about Mexican women. Actually, when he pushed his thought a bit, he knew very little about women. Period. So his Need-to-Know list might be a little longer than others.

  Still, Spud picked up his pencil again. He must be able to think of a few general Need-to-Knows. Who Were These Women, Where Did They Come From, How Did They Die, Who Killed Them, Where Did They Die, and Why. Spud put his pencil down. Why. He let the word linger in his mind. Jamie jumped onto the desk and nudged Spud’s hand, then pushed his head under Spud’s fingers. Spud was all too happy for the interruption.

  Why indeed. That’s what detectives mean by motive. Know the motive and solve the crime. But no motive presented itself to Spud. Not for two sets of murders in two years, even if all three victims were Mexican women and they were found in close proximity to each other. None of it made sense. Jamie’s purr turned more determined and he shifted his position so that the back of his head rested on the desktop while his body remained as it was. Going to rain again soon, Spud thought. Cats know. Wish this cat could identify motives and predict the outcome of mysteries as well as he can predict rain.

  Edith heard the hoof beats before Willa did. A lot of hooves, a posse’s worth. Edith and Willa slipped from the dining room out through the kitchen to hear the latest from Tony. Amelia put down the eggs she was about to crack open and joined them. Tony had driven his car back from the pueblo to saddle a horse for himself and collect a couple of dogs from the pack that seemed always to be hanging around Los Gallos. He chose two known to be good trackers and shut the others in a side yard, asking Amelia to release them when the posse was well away from the house.

  Six riders waited for Tony in the dim light of predawn. Edith recognized them as some of the pueblo dancers who often performed at Los Gallos, sometimes for Mabel’s fabled parties, sometimes for no apparent reason. They were Tony’s friends. All were well armed. Edith was impressed. Two of the younger men wore headbands, the others wore braids draped over their chests like Tony’s. Their horses fidgeted in anticipation, and before Tony could mount his gelding, several began pawing the ground and one of the young men’s horses reared high in the air.

  “Whoa,” Willa exclaimed. “So eager.”

  Tony’s gelding ignored them and stood patiently waiting for Tony to swing into the saddle.

  “You’ll be all right?” Edith put her hand on the nosepiece of Tony’s bridle as he mounted.

  “We’ll find them,” Tony declared once he was in the saddle. He, too, had placed a rifle in his scabbard.

  Spud, John, and Mabel hurried out of the kitchen. Still in her dressing gown, Mabel saw nothing but Tony. The door slammed behind them. Tony’s horse flinched.

  Mabel went immediately to Tony and put her hand on his leg. “I don’t like this, Tony. You haven’t ridden much lately. There’s no reason for you to put yourself in danger. Let the sheriff take care of it.”

  “Sheriff no. This happened on pueblo land.”

  “All the same, no need for you to go.”

  Tony urged his gelding in front of the posse. The young man’s horse reared again and then they were off, cantering easily toward Arroyo Seco, the two dogs trailing behind and Tony in the lead.

  “Tony will be all right,” Willa reassured Mabel. “And he’s right to take the lead. He’s level-headed. He’ll make certain they stay safe.”

  “I suppose,” Mabel conceded, “but Tony doesn’t know who these men are or why they shot Agent Dan. Nobody does, not even Agent Dan. How can Tony keep the posse safe?”

  “He’ll find a way.” Edith joined Willa next to Mabel. “Tony is resourceful.”

  As the others turned to follow Amelia back to the kitchen, Mabel joined them, declaring that until Tony returned she would spend the day in her room. Willa and Edith paused to watch puffs of dust rise lazily upward, marking the riders’ route until the posse disappeared into the shadow of Taos Mountain.

  “You do think Tony will be all right, don’t you?”

  “I hope so. Oh, I’m sure he will.”

  Edith turned to follow the others inside, but Willa called her back.

  “Look,” Willa pointed toward the mountain. “So beautiful.”

  Willa’s voice sounded like a breath exhaled. She put her hand on Edith’s arm to draw her attention to the top of the mountain just as the sun crested its ridge. Gold shot high into the sky and spilled down the mountain’s face. Rose and peach tinged the clouds above a
nd the ground below. Wisps of sage scattered along the desert floor grew into individual plants, gray and soft-green. Some wore crowns of gold.

  “Glorious, the light, yes.”

  For no reason Edith could think of she found herself focused not on the light, the rose and gold, but on the mountain’s dark face. Trails there rose to the hidden heart of the mountain, Blue Lake, revered as the source of life, the place from which the Taos Pueblo people came. Sacred. Spirit-filled. Source of inspiration and renewal. Edith knew from Tony a little about the ancient rituals the pueblo practiced there. She also knew that little bit was all she would ever know. The pueblo chose not to share those rituals as they did their feast day dances and celebrations with the church. Catholic priests over many generations had managed to reform some of the pueblo’s rituals to include Christian symbols and church ritual, but the pueblo kept the most ancient to themselves.

  Funny how that works, Edith mused. Taos Pueblo wasn’t the only group practicing religious rites on that mountain. Last summer Edith and Willa had been wakened in the middle of the night by low moans and the sharp sound of lashes. At first they were terrified. Then they learned they had been hearing the Hermanos Penitentes trudging along the trail that ran next to Los Gallos to their place of worship, La Morada de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. One of the first moradas in New Mexico, this one was founded under the guidance of Padre Martinez, the same powerful padre Archbishop Lamy excommunicated. Willa and Edith had learned a great deal about both of those men and the Penitentes. Archbishop Lamy became Archbishop Latour in Willa’s novel, but she had not changed the name of the character representing Padre Martinez. He became for Latour as he had for Lamy, a sign of corruption and violence and misdirection.

  What struck Edith now as she contemplated the dark face of the mountain were parallels in the practices of Hispanic Penitentes and members of the pueblo kiva societies. Both were restricted to men, and both kept their sacred rituals secret. But there, as far as Edith could tell, the similarities stopped. Penitentes seemed to want to put to death whatever was earthly in them. The kiva societies were all about life, about fecundity in humans and nature, about the natural rhythms of living and dying.

  Instead of the Penitentes’ moans and lashes and the dragging of heavy wooden crosses, Edith thought, kiva societies’ public displays were symbolic pageantry. They repeated tales about deer and buffalo and corn over and over on individual feast days, made lively with costumes, drumming, and ritual dances, and edged with the ribald humor of koshare, the sacred black-and-white clown dancers who teased and disrupted the others in order to admonish bad behavior. The kiva societies are like satirists, Edith guessed. They would welcome Spud with his Laughing Horse. He would fit right in. But, she thought, Spud’s brand of irreverence would never find favor among the Penitentes. No, Spud would not be acceptable among the Penitentes, Edith decided, nor would anyone else at Los Gallos. Such a different understanding of the world around them, the kiva societies and the Penitentes. And, she finished her thought, of life and death.

  The sun was already casting morning shadows when Adam set up his easel next to the porch steps. Not an ideal location and Maria might consider him frivolous, but he needed to think what to do next and that meant he needed to paint. Words interested him and he loved to read, but he knew himself to be a visual thinker. His ideas always came in images, sometimes in mid-image. When he prepared a canvas or picked up a brush he might be expecting to work on a certain scene or experiment with juxtaposing an orange and a red, say, but when he actually put brush to canvas, something quite different might happen. And when it did, he knew he was thinking inside the painting, not imposing ideas on it but letting them happen. Those were moments to celebrate. And repeat.

  A few years ago, when he was just beginning to paint and found himself paralyzed, staring in apprehension at an empty canvas, a fellow painter told him not to think, just to put a mark on the canvas. Any mark, anywhere. And let it tell him what to do next. He tried it and it worked, worked amazingly well. After that he forgot to be apprehensive. He forgot everything except what was immediately before him. Every morning the marks on his canvas would take him somewhere interesting. And the morning after that he would tidy up what he’d done and move on, always letting the marks on his canvas tell him where to go next.

  Maybe focusing on the colors and shapes in the canvas before him now would free his thoughts of clutter and fear. And maybe then he could give rein to new ideas, not just about the painting before him but about what to do next. Adam could hear Maria moving about in the house, sweeping the floor and putting things away after breakfast. Comforting sounds, but sounds he needed to let fade from his consciousness. At this point, he wanted to empty his mind entirely. A deep breath, slow intake, slow exhale should do it. He let his arms and hands go limp in preparation. Then, keeping the colors and shapes on the canvas fixed in his mind, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and again deeper still.

  But nothing came. No new idea. Just a visual image of Blade holding out his hand to take Adam’s ten dollars. That was a lot of money for Adam. He had expected it to get him through the summer, especially now that he was staying at the ranch. He would have to borrow from Spud. If he ever got to see Spud again. Those men who came looking for Blade had really frightened Maria, and Adam was sure Maria didn’t frighten easily. But he had felt her hand tremble on his shoulder and heard the relief in her voice when they rode away. If Maria was frightened, he should be, too. He wished he had seen them, those men, wished he knew more about them. He was sure Maria knew them somehow. How? For Adam they were random visitors. They were not random for Maria. If only she could tell him what she knew.

  Adam picked up his pallet and a tube of paint. He had slept well, amazingly well considering the circumstances. No nightmares of Blade or riders in the dark. He knew when he fell asleep that he had to come up with a plan to leave the ranch before those men returned or at least to get word to Spud and others who might help, but he remembered no dreams about any of that. In fact, he remembered no dreams at all. Still, he did feel refreshed. And hopeful. The tube he picked up was bright green. He squeezed a dab next to a dusky blue already on the pallet and picked up his brush. The day before he had begun to catch the upsweep of the enormous ponderosa that hovered over the ranch house. What he wanted to capture now was its motion and its towering height. Once he swirled the colors on his pallet, he looked again at the canvas and this time did not look away.

  Edith smoothed the Two Grey Hills rug they were using as a blanket to cover Agent Dan’s chest and placed a fork in his free hand. Spud had already propped Dan up so he could eat from the bowl of scrambled eggs they brought him from the kitchen. Sustenance, sayeth the doctor, Edith smiled to herself.

  Dan scooped a forkfull of eggs. “Feel much better already, thanks,” he spoke with his mouth full.

  “You should,” Spud grinned. “Those are Amelia’s eggs.”

  “You certainly look better,” Willa mirrored Spud’s grin. “You were a ghost of yourself when they brought you in last night.”

  “Deathly pale,” Edith nodded. “Lucky to be alive.”

  “Guess it was luck those fellows from the pueblo found me,” Dan agreed around another mouthful of eggs.

  “Where did they find you?” Willa asked.

  “And why? Why were you there?” Edith added before he could answer.

  “You know, I have no idea where I was when they found me. I was following hoof prints from a hunting camp near pueblo land. Might have been the camp you saw,” Dan nodded at the two of them. “Two horses, fresh prints.”

  “How fresh?”

  “Fresh,” Dan responded with emphasis. “Fresher than I think your tracks would be. But say again when you were there?”

  “It was the second day after we arrived,” Edith recounted, “so three days ago.”

  “And it’s rained since,” Willa reminded them.

  “But why were you there?” Edith wanted to bring him back
to her original question.

  “Got curious.” Dan handed his empty bowl to Willa. Spud gave Dan a glass of water and told him to drink. He did.

  “What did it look like, the camp you found?” Willa looked hopeful. “Maybe it wasn’t the same place.”

  “I bet it was,” Edith grimaced. “I’ve never been so frightened. Did you see the blood? The chopping block?”

  “We really were frightened half to death,” Willa acknowledged.

  “Even our horses were spooked.”

  “You should have been scared, too,” Spud turned their attention back to Agent Dan, “going around unarmed the way you do.”

  “The Bureau doesn’t allow guns and we’re not really part of the Wild West, you know. I’m here because of Capone and reports about human trafficking. I didn’t plan to do anything that would get me shot.”

  “Why did get you shot do you think? Were they out to get you or were you just in the wrong place, wrong time?” Willa asked.

  “You mean the hunting camp?” Dan’s voice fell to a hoarse whisper. “You never know when death comes. But you two were right to leave that place when you did.” He closed his eyes.

  “You saw the blood?” Edith insisted.

  “I saw it. Left to track hoof prints. Followed them for maybe three quarters of an hour back onto pueblo land, then north and west again.” Dan let his head sink deeper into his pillow. His voice grew more hoarse then sank to a whisper. “You were right to leave that place.”

  Spud took the bowl from Dan’s hand and straightened the rug on his chest. “Guess that tired him out. But I’ll bet he’s back on his feet tomorrow. He’s plenty strong, this man.”

  “I do think it’s time we let him sleep,” Willa whispered.

  Edith could tell Agent Dan had already drifted away, but his words about the hunting camp lingered, sending a chill all the way down to her toes.

  XI