The Dead, the Dying and the Damned by Matt Cole

Author:Matt Cole [Cole, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Let Fate Decide

Don José Antonio Parra raised his head as his foreman approached. It was his habit to work on his books in the main courtyard by the fountain. Accounting was a task he would normally enjoy. The rows and rows of neat figures told him how much richer he was becoming and suggested ways to cut costs and increase profits. It was an exercise that gave more pleasure than drinking good wine or making love. But all pleasure was dimmed these days, by the more or less public humiliation of a theft from his home.

The foreman, a man named Jorge Morales, brought a good report. All the grain was in, and the peons were ready for other work.

‘Shear the sheep,’ Don José ordered.

Jorge Morales nodded obediently and left. The Don chewed on his pen and then set it aside. He was pouring wine from a clay jug as his daughter Delfina appeared.

She was the only person on San Cristóbal who dared interrupt this way; she was, after all, the apple of his eye, his pride and joy.

Father and daughter were still together in the courtyard some time later when Gregorio arrived. The tall, thin vaquero had been absent for a few days, searching for a lead on Cotton Harding, and he had finally dug up some news.

Harding, Gregorio announced, was reported to be in Hermanas Pozos.

Don José Antonio’s elation at the news was just as quickly quenched.

‘Hermanas Pozos?’ he asked, ‘now?’

Both Gregorio and his daughter knew what he meant. Of all the places on the great plain where someone might go of his own free will at the moment, Hermanas Pozos would have to be on the bottom of any such list.

Even as Gregorio nodded, Don José was recalling the way Harding had spoken of Hermanas Pozos and Juan Manuel Benitez on the night of the robbery.

‘What is his interest in that rat-hole of a town?’ he wanted to know.

‘Harding has a woman in Hermanas Pozos, Don José,’ Gregorio said. ‘I am told she suffers from the fever. I am also told that when Harding returned to the town, he was not alone. He brought with him a band of pistoleros like himself.’

Staring at his man, Don José massaged his temple as he tried to understand.

‘Do you have orders, Don José?’ Gregorio asked meekly.

Don José Antonio Parra deliberated. Apart from alerting the law and having wanted papers posted on Harding, he had sent his men in search of Harding. His intention had been to alert the law if his men found Harding, but there were no soldiers near Hermanas Pozos. Juan Manuel Benitez was raging through the region at full strength. Parra had no intention of buying into that, no matter how badly he might want Harding’s head. Suddenly, he saw that there was no real need for him to interfere anyway – for didn’t everyone know that Hermanas Pozos was doomed?

The rich man began to smile from ear to ear. He was content to sit back and let fate get rid of Cotton Harding for him once and for all.

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