“How can a man thank you?”
“Don’t bother. They pulled the same thing on me once. What’s it all about?”
“Ryker’s been smuggling guns to the Apaches,” Perea said. I’ve been trying to prove it. One of Teresa’s spies in the plaza told me he’d seen four of Ryker’s wagons turn out of the train at the cutoff to Pecos.”
Kelly looked at the crates. “They’ve been here all right.”
Perea said, “We’re too late. They’re empty.”
With the light held high they saw that there was a break in the crumbling wall, opening onto the balcony in front. They walked to the break and peered through without exposing themselves. The city lay silent and gilded with haze. And ten feet from them, sprawled near the edge of the terrace, lay the dead man, Wingy Hollister, huddled on his side, both hands still clutched over the bloody wound Kelly’s knife had ripped in his paunch.
“I guess that’s for Turkey Thompson,” Kelly said.
19
The reverberations of the incident at Pecos took a long time to die. Jares and Saunders had disappeared from town and no connection would be established between them and Ryker, though those on the inner circles knew that the men had long worked for him.
Teresa had several meetings with Amado but he seemed to know nothing. She could get little more out of her spies. Pablo, the farmer from Santa Cruz, was the head of her system of informers now. He had half the peons in the department working for her, knowing they would get a peso for any item of valid information they turned in. Finally he came to her with what might be a lead.
It came from a man named Felipe Vargas. He had formerly been a servant for Juan Archuleta, one of the big landholders of the Lower River and now a member of the Assembly. In punishment for some mysterious crime, Vargas had been flogged unmercifully and had avoided death only by escaping the Archuleta estancia. Ostracized and outlawed because of this defiance of his patron, Vargas had turned highwayman in order to survive, and had become the scourge of the Camino Real between Albuquerque and El Paso.
“I got word from Vargas through a rancher near Albuquerque,” Pablo said. “Vargas knows something that might have a bearing on these guns. But he insists on seeing you personally. Naturally he can’t show his face in town. He said he’d be at Mendoza’s Inn tonight, at ten o’clock. You’re to bring five hundred pesos.”
Mendoza’s Inn was a place east of Santa Fe, frequented by thieves and cutthroats. Teresa knew the danger of such a rendezvous. Biscara would welcome any chance to get her out of the way. The defeats he had suffered at her hands since the revolution had made him hate her even more bitterly. If any of his men caught her at a place like Mendoza’s, they could do almost anything to her without fear of being discovered or blamed. Yet this business of the guns was assuming an ever more threatening significance. Somehow she had to find out. She felt a flush of excitement touch her cheeks as she looked at Pablo.
“Whoever’s mixed up with these guns knows I’m interested now.”
The swarthy man nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. If you’re being watched it would betray us to take the coach. Even too many guards would give you away.”
Most of Teresa’s intrigues had been confined to the comparative safety of her salon, and it had been a long time since she’d taken such a chance. Her voice sounded a little breathless.
“Then it will be just you and me, Pablo—tonight.”
As a decoy they let the word spread around that she would visit one of her cousins north of town, and an hour ahead of time the empty coach clattered out of the zaguán, followed by the half a dozen outriders who always accompanied it. At nine Teresa and Pablo let themselves into the pitch blackness of Burro Alley. She was disguised in a servant’s camisa and heavy wool skirt, her famous red hair hidden beneath a cheap rebozo.
They halted at the mouth of the alley, studying the empty street beyond. There was the clatter of hoofs from the plaza and Pablo pulled Teresa against the wall. A file of dragoons trotted onto San Francisco Street, accouterments tinkling as they passed the alley not ten feet away. It was not any regular patrol.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Teresa said. “Maybe the coach didn’t fool them.”
He grinned slyly. “You’re getting soft, señorita. Before the revolution you weren’t afraid to take things in your own hands.”
Her eyes flashed angrily. “Let’s go.”
Tensely they crossed the street, following dingy back ways and narrow alleys to the river. They followed its sandy banks southwest, keeping to the cover of screening willows. Once near the outskirts of town they heard the tinkle of accouterments again and stopped in the black shadows, standing tense and breathless while the dragoons passed them on the road above. Afterward they went on, leaving the boundaries of the town. In half an hour they reached Mendoza’s, a dingy cluster of adobe buildings on the river road from Santa Fe.
Pablo led her stealthily through the dilapidated inn yard and into a rear room, lit only by the coals glowing in the cone-shaped corner fireplace. He left her here and went through a door into the taproom. She could hear the low mutter of voices, the tinkle of glasses.
She stiffened as the door opened again. Pablo led two men in. One was a tall, swaggering rogue in patched buckskins, a scraggly beard growing to a point on his chin and giving his face a devilish shape. She knew instantly that it was Felipe Vargas. He smiled mockingly and bowed with exaggerated gallantry.
“An honor I never expected, señorita.”
The man with him was introduced as Gene Cummings. Teresa knew him by reputation—one of the numberless Yankee renegades who had fled from some dark past east of the Mississippi. He immediately walked to the rear door and opened it a crack, head cocked like a listening hound.
Vargas walked to the table, spurs clanking, and pulled out a chair. Eyes on his face, Teresa sat down. He took another chair, watching her obliquely.
“I’ll tell you my story. If it has any connection with the guns, you can pay me.”
Six months ago, Vargas said, Juan Archuleta began having mysterious meetings with a pair of Texas traders in Santa Fe. During that time he sent for Vargas and ordered him to deliver a letter to Mirabeau Lamar, the president of the new Texas Republic. Archuleta said it was merely a request for certain trading concessions in San Antonio. Vargas had often acted as a courier for Archuleta and was a trusted servant. But this time he refused.
“This wasn’t the ordinary way to send a commercial letter,” Vargas told Teresa. “I was afraid of getting mixed up in some conspiracy with Texas. I knew it would be worth my life.”
Teresa nodded. She knew that since Texas had broken away from Mexico in 1836 there were many Texans who claimed that more than half of New Mexico fell within the boundaries of their new republic. Teresa had heard rumors of a movement within Texas to make good that claim. Governor Amado had threatened death to any New Mexican aiding such a movement.
“Archuleta had put himself out on a limb by even trusting me that far,” Vargas said. “He ordered me flogged for refusing his orders, but I think he meant to have them keep it up till I was dead. It was why I had to escape.”
Cummings made a hissing sound by the door. Vargas jumped to his feet, hand on the pistol at his belt. For a moment they waited tensely, firelight flickering across their taut faces. Then Cummings glanced at Vargas, shrugged.
Teresa let out a relieved breath, turned to Vargas. “How do you tie this up with the guns?”
The man paced the room restlessly, eyes on the door. “If Texas lays claim to any of New Mexico, they’ll have to send an invading force to take it. And an invading force would need arms. Either those guns could be for Texans or for New Mexicans who mean to help them.”
She saw the logic of that. “Would the proof be in that letter?”
“The arms would be one of
Archuleta’s big offerings. Naturally he’d be talking about them.”
“Would he be sending another letter?”
“If he did, the courier would ride with the monthly patrol to El Paso. It was the way Archuleta sent his last messenger.”
Teresa glanced at Pablo. “Have you anyone capable of getting that message?”
The farmer shook his head slowly, frowning. Most of the people he relied on were farmers or townsmen. They knew what went on in the country but they were not reckless or daring enough to attack professional soldiers. Undoubtedly the dragoons didn’t know what message Archuleta’s courier carried, but their job was to protect anyone traveling with them. Slowly Pablo’s eyes swung toward Vargas. The highwayman sensed his thought, threw back his head to laugh wolfishly.
“I’m not that crazy, Pablo.”
Teresa studied Vargas. He had the reputation of being a wild and reckless rogue who would do almost anything for a price.
“A fanega of pesos,” she said. “Your freedom from Archuleta, and a pardon for all your past crimes.”
Cummings turned sharply from the door. Vargas’s mouth dropped open. Cummings began to chuckle huskily.
“Settin’ aside everything else, twelve thousand pesos would make me brave enough to fight the whole Mexican army.”
Vargas grinned recklessly. “You won’t have to do it alone, amigo. It’s a deal, señorita. And if—”
Cummings’s sharp movement by the door cut him off. The Yankee was looking outside again. Teresa could hear it now, the clip-clop of horse’s hoofs, the tinkle of accouterments. The pistol leaped into Vargas’s hand. His fox-sharp face was turned to Teresa, taut with angry suspicion.
She rose, cheeks flaming. “Don’t be stupid. What would I gain by bringing them down on you?”
Pablo tore open a side door leading to a storeroom. Teresa saw the legs of a ladder leading upward.
“Upstairs,” Pablo snapped. “You can cross the roofs to the arroyo.”
With a last scowling glance at Teresa, the highwayman lunged into the room, followed by Cummings. Pablo slammed the door shut on them. Then both he and Teresa started toward the rear door. They were halfway out when a trio of dragoons galloped into the inn yard, deploying to block them off. At the same time three more burst in from the taproom. One of them was Captain Uvalde.
A malicious light filled his dark eyes with his first sight of Teresa. Yet there seemed no surprise. He glanced around the room, then jerked his unsheathed saber toward the side door. A soldier opened it, saw the ladder, and began to climb upward. Uvalde smiled crookedly at Teresa.
“You pick strange places, señorita.”
She stood stiff and defiant against the wall. “I might say the same for you.”
The dragoon came back down the ladder, reporting nothing in sight on the roof. Teresa tried not to show her triumph. Vargas and Cummings must have dropped off into the arroyo before the soldier gained the top. A baffled light filled Uvalde’s eyes.
“We had word Felipe Vargas was seen here,” he told Teresa. “That would make it—dangerous for you.”
It was her turn to smile. “Then you can escort me back. I’d feel perfectly safe with you—Captain.”
* * * *
After Uvalde left her at her sala, she tried to guess his true purpose at coming to the Inn. It could have been on the strength of a tip that Vargas was there. Or it could have been something more. Uvalde was one of Amado’s right-hand men, doing a lot of nasty jobs for the governor. Yet he was a man who played both ends against the middle, and could be bought, if the price was right. It was possible that Archuleta had put him to watching her….
The day after her trip to Mendoza’s she had a meeting with Amado and asked him to pardon Vargas. She didn’t tell Amado about Archuleta but simply said she needed Vargas. Amado had come to respect the value of her spy system and it took little persuading to make him grant the pardon. Through the next weeks she waited anxiously till the monthly patrol to El Paso left Santa Fe. Then Pablo brought her word that a rider from Archuleta’s household had accompanied the troops.
Two nights later Pablo brought Vargas and Cummings to her salon. They still showed signs of the fight. There was a livid scar on Vargas’s face and Cummings had an arm in a bloody sling. With his sardonic grin, Vargas produced the oilskin packet.
“We jumped them at night below Albuquerque. I lost two men in the fight but we finally got the messenger away. He had the packet sewed inside his shirt.”
Inside the packet was a five-page letter from Juan Archuleta to Mirabeau Lamar. Archuleta referred to previous correspondence with Lamar concerning the possibility of an invasion from Texas. Then he expressed his disgust with Amado and his impatience with the Lower River for their failure to depose him. He offered his help in any attempt of Texas to annex New Mexico, in return for a high office in the government the Texans would establish in Santa Fe. Following was a long list of his plans to undermine the present regime. It was conspiracy on a grand scale, but nowhere was there any mention of the guns.
It was a disappointment. Yet she knew the value of the letter. At first she had the impulse to tell Amado. Then she rejected that. Amado would only imprison Archuleta or execute him and it would gain them nothing now. She knew Archuleta’s conspiracy would stop as soon as he heard what happened to his messenger. He would guess what lay back of it and would be quaking in his boots for fear of exposure. It would be better to wait till some future time when exposing Archuleta would gain them more than his downfall. In the meantime, it would be good to have such a threat against a Biscara man.
She handed Vargas his pardon. “Getting your freedom from Archuleta will take a little longer. But he won’t dare touch you as soon as he realizes we have this letter. You can walk the streets like a free man. And, as a free man, how would you like to go on working for me?”
Grinning, Vargas bowed low. “At such handsome wages—how could we refuse?”
She told Pablo to take them out and make arrangements for a place in town. When they had gone she sat down and closed her eyes, feeling let-down, defeated. The question of the guns had not been answered. Yet she had not lost entirely. It was all a part of the endless process—an incessant balancing and counterbalancing of power, moving and checking, creating and destroying, a giant chess game that went on without end….
Vargas and Cummings proved a valuable addition to her system of spies and informers; they and their reckless gang gave it a hard core of daring it had never possessed before. More than once she used them for jobs that no one else had the courage to attempt. Through the rest of 1839 and the next year she had her fingers in almost every plot or intrigue brewing in Santa Fe. What she didn’t find out from her spies came to her through the countless other channels she had developed. One of these sources of information was the trappers who came down from the wild north country where few Mexicans ventured.
They came to Taos and Santa Fe every spring, selling their harvest of furs and spending their money in drunken sprees. And Kelly Morgan came with them.
He showed up in Santa Fe during April of 1841 with his spring harvest of furs. He sold them to Danny O’Brien and bought himself new buckskins and a twenty-dollar beaver hat and a belt made from gold pesos. He found three Mexican girls at La Fonda and set about seeing how fast he could get rid of his money. By evening he’d been in three brawls and before midnight he was thrown in La Garita, dead drunk and dead broke.
He showed up at Teresa’s a few days later; it was morning and she and the barman were the only ones in the main sala when Kelly came in. His beaver hat and gold belt were gone; his new buckskins were torn in a dozen places and caked with mud and straw from nights spent huddled against a wall or in a haystack. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and a week’s growth of beard covered his belligerent jaw with a blond stubble. It was a typical picture
of the half a hundred trappers in town, broke, surly with hangovers, squatting against the mud walls or wandering emptily through the streets, facing a summer of starving and scrounging till fall took them back to their traplines. It was part of the price they paid for the strange savage sort of freedom they found in the mountains. She tried not to feel sorry for Kelly, but she couldn’t help it. She looked him up and down, veiling her green eyes so he couldn’t see the compassion in them.
“If you want a drink,” she said, “it’s on the house.”
He leaned against the bar, grinning indolently. “I didn’t come to beg. What I got you can pay for.”
She was surprised. “What’s that?”
“Information.”
She frowned at him. The fencing again. The antagonism. The wondering. Why should she feel this way? He should be ugly to her, with his beard, his dirty clothes, his shabbiness.
“I thought you didn’t like dirty politics.”
“A man can change his mind,” he said.
She was disappointed. She had wanted this. Yet, in a strange way, she hadn’t wanted it. He had been the only one she couldn’t draw into her net of intrigue, the only one she couldn’t maneuver or control in some way. And it had set him apart somehow. It was odd that the pride of so simple a man could be such a shining thing. Yet it was a thing she had come to admire. And now an empty belly had humbled him.
“All right,” she said thinly. “A peso for a tidbit. A bigger price for bigger news.”
He wiped his mouth, looked around at the door. He slid toward her along the bar, voice growing confidential. “I come acrost somethin’ up at Taos that’s agoin’ to cause the biggest revolution in this country you’ll ever see.”
She remembered the guns, last year, and the questions that had never been answered. Excitement flushed her cheeks. “Revolution?”
He glanced at the bartender. “Maybe we better go somewhere. Your servants seem to pick up everything.”
Teresa Page 18