The fallon legacy, p.31
The Fallon Legacy, page 31
“It was his men,” Wainwright said stolidly.
“But he couldn’t have given the order.”
“That’s right,” Edwards spoke up suddenly. “All this happened while I was on my way back from the States. You can’t blame me for what men do while I’m not here.”
“They are in your hire,” Sarmento said ominously. Wainwright and Skelton moved closer to Edwards.
“He could’ve come back sooner than you think,” the blacksmith rumbled.
“Then prove it,” Austin said. Edwards’s eyes, small in his broad face, shifted uneasily. Austin went on. “Find someone who saw him. Not someone who just wants to see him in prison, someone who actually saw him. You think he sent those men to Morales’s rancho? Find proof. Did Morales recognize any of his attackers? Find them.”
“Cuevas,” Marin said. “Limon …” He looked at Skelton.
“Oakes and Dunning,” the big man said.
Marin nodded. “You have heard Senor Austin. Ask questions. Find …” he hesitated again, obviously reluctant. “Find the truth.” The four men they had named filed out.
“We know some names,” Skelton said, “and we’re looking. Hogan, Lloyd, Dickson, Altman, and Walters. We’ll find them,” he finished grimly.
“No unnecessary violence,” Austin cautioned. “That would weaken your case.” There was some grumbling from the men around the wall, but Marin and the other leaders nodded. “Mr. Edwards,” Austin went on, “I’m sure you’ll help as much as you’re able.”
“Help?” Edwards said.
“These men acted without your orders; you’ll want to see them brought to justice.”
Edwards answered in a sour voice. “Naturally.”
“All this don’t pluck no chickens,” Wainwright said. “He’s still trying to take everybody’s land.”
“Damn you,” Edwards said, “I have a grant! The land is—”
“Edwards,” James broke in, “why don’t you be quiet and let Austin try to keep you from a lynching?”
Edwards glared about the room and subsided.
“What do you suggest, Señor Austin?” Marin asked.
“Submit the matter to the jefe politico in San Antonio, Don José Saucedo.”
“Submit—” Edwards shouted.
“That will take months!” Marin cried.
“Shut up!” James bellowed. The entire room hushed; they all stared at him. “Senor Marin, you think you’re in the right. Mr. Edwards, you think you are. Why not submit it to San Antonio? Don José has no axe to grind. Would any of you rather have the army in here?”
Austin quickly spoke into the silence. “Señor Marin, there are paper and pen in the writing desk. Perhaps you and the other gentlemen and you, Mr. Edwards, could set down your grievances.
Marin, muttering, removed to the far end of the room with pen and paper. Edwards glowered in his chair, making no move toward the desk. James bent closer to the broad man’s ears.
“Edwards, Austin has stopped them hanging you. Don’t think they won’t change their minds, though, if you start dragging your heels.”
“The grant is mine,” Edwards growled, “but every Mexican with three friends claims part of it. You think I’ll get a fair hearing before Saucedo? He’s Mexican.”
“You don’t have much choice, unless you want to let your brother avenge you. And that doesn’t appeal to me, because these men might just take it into their heads to hang Austin and me, too.”
Edwards drew in a deep breath. “Damn their souls to hell. All right, Fallon. All right, damn you.”
As Edwards took his seat at the writing desk, scowling, James drew Austin to a far corner of the room.
“Stephen, do you think this will work?”
Austin shrugged. “It buys peace awhile longer, in any case. There is right on both sides, remember.”
“I don’t like Edwards, even if he did save my life. I do like Morales, and Marin and Skelton and a lot of the rest.”
“So you’d side with them against Edwards? That would put your land at risk, too! You may find yourself ordered out of Mexico.”
“I can’t match your dispassion, Stephen. When I like people, I want to be on their side.”
“Damn you, James!” Suddenly Austin’s eyes were burning. His words were low but forceful. “I have a colony. Hundreds of people who depend on me. I can’t put all that on the table and gamble. I won’t. It might not be glorious, but compromise is the only way we can live in Mexico. The only way, James.”
James grimaced. Edwards was still writing. The discussion around Marin had risen in volume. Could a man live his entire life through compromise? “Let’s get a drink, Stephen. I think it’s going to be a long day.”
A long day proved to be an understatement. Wainwright and the others demanded to see Edwards’s letter to Saucedo; when he refused, they were ready to take it from him. Austin managed to persuade everyone into allowing him to read both petitions aloud. That almost put everything back in the fire. As should have been expected, the two documents were wildly different. Edwards began shouting that the others were sending a pack of lies to Saucedo; Wainwright, among others, was ready to forget all about petitions and hang Edwards immediately. Marin, one of the more reasonable men there, wanted to burn Edwards’s petition and hold him under guard until their appeal brought an answer. Once more, Austin achieved agreement: Both documents would go to Saucedo, and Edwards would be allowed to choose his own messenger.
As evening approached, a crowd of Edwards’s supporters began to gather across the plaza. James watched them for a time from a window, holding the curtain aside. Farmers and storekeepers, the honest folk who had bought land from Edwards, or wanted to. The smugglers and riffraff, perhaps sensing the possibility of violence, weren’t in evidence. It was good that Ben Edwards hadn’t shown up. That hothead would be a match in dry tinder. The crowd continued to grow, though, until it numbered over a hundred.
“God damn it,” Wainwright said. It was less than an hour till full night, the street already dusky with shadows. “If they bottle us up in here tonight, we’ll be ducks down a well.”
Marin nodded disconsolately. “I fear you are right, señor. But what are we to do with Senor Edwards? I do not relish trying to take him away through that crowd.”
“Why take him anywhere?” Austin asked.
“You think we’re fools?” Wainwright snapped. “We let him go, we ain’t never going to get our hands on him again.”
“Why should you need to, Mr. Wainwright? Both messengers have been away for hours. This matter will be settled by Don José Saucedo.”
“But—” Wainwright sputtered.
James chuckled. The sound was so unexpected that everyone turned to stare at him. “You afraid he’ll run off, Wainwright? So what? If he stays, the jefe politico will decide between you, as Senor Austin says. If he goes, you win by default.”
“I’m staying,” Edwards said heavily. “No rag-tag bobtail bunch of—”
“Easy,” Austin said. “Gentlemen, as Senor Fallon has succinctly pointed out, you have no need to take Senor Edwards with you. As Señor Marin has suggested, you would scarcely get him away without bloodshed. Is it worth it, for no reason?”
Marin, Skelton, Sarmento, and Wainwright conferred. Finally Marin turned to Edwards.
“Señor Edwards, we will leave you here. Do not think this means we are forgetting our charges against you. We intend to see you punished, for the beating given to Esteban Morales and for the theft of land. You will hear from us, señor.” He bowed to Austin and James. “Buenas noches, señores. Hasta la vista.”
When they were gone, Edwards surged out of his chair with a bitter, nervous laugh. “Damn them. Arrest me, will they? I’ll show them.”
“It’s all up to the authorities now,” Austin cautioned.
There was a knock on the door. Edwards sidled to the window, lifting the edge of the curtain slightly. With another laugh he dropped it. “Friends. My friends. Stay and have a drink with us.”
A full day of Edwards was already more than James could take. “Sorry. It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”
“I, too,” Austin added.
Edwards opened the door, quickly absorbed with the adulation of the men who crowded in. James and Austin slipped out quietly. It was a gray twilight, pierced by light from windows along the street. Laughter floated from the house they’d just left, and someone struck up a fiddle.
“Did you hear them?” James said disgustedly. “And him? They think he faced down Marin and the rest. They think he’s a damned hero, and he’s letting them.”
Austin sighed. “Sometimes I think that when the histories are written of the settling of Texas, it’s men like Edwards who’ll be given all the credit. You and I will be lucky to merit a footnote.”
“You want to be in the histories?”
For a moment Austin seemed to stand taller. “Only a fool sets out to be in the history books, James. But only a fool refuses the chance if it comes.”
“I think you’ll make more than a footnote, Stephen.”
Austin laughed and shook his head. “Let’s go have a friendly drink, James.”
Together they headed down the street, away from the sounds of revelry.
39
“I’m going home,” James said three days later. He and Austin were in the Boston Saloon and Coffee House, at a table with a good view of the street.
“I wonder if they actually serve catfish stew in Boston?” Austin sipped his coffee.
“Stephen, I’m going. Drusilla’s going to have her baby any day. I shouldn’t have left her alone this long.”
“You’re needed, James. You’ve already proved that. Now smoke your cigar, drink your coffee, and—”
“I damn well am not needed. The petitions are safely off to San Antonio, Edwards has stopped his land dealings altogether, and Marin and the rest are staying out of town.”
The restaurant’s lone waiter made his disjointed way to their table with a large tin coffeepot and refilled their cups. Austin waited until he had shambled away.
“You think they’ll stay quiet, James?”
“I want to go home, Stephen.”
“As soon as Edwards starts thinking about how they made him back down—that’s the way he’ll see it—he’ll be dealing in land with a vengeance. Ben’s already been mouthing off about ragamuffin squatters who should be driven out of Texas without further ado.”
“I haven’t seen my wife in six weeks, Stephen. She’s going to have a baby.”
“And what about Marin and Skelton and Wainwright?” Austin went on. “Especially Wainwright? They’re still after the men who beat Morales; and if they find them, and they say they got orders from the Edwardses, we’ll have a small war on our hands.” He laughed bitterly. “If I wasn’t an educated man, sometimes I’d believe there was an evil genius manipulating events to produce chaos.”
The words triggered James’s thoughts. Evil. Manipulating. Cordelia Applegate. Gerard Fourrier. He couldn’t see Fourrier as Austin’s evil genius, but still … “Stephen, what do you know about Fourrier? He’s in Nacogdoches, you know.”
“He has widespread business interests, or so I understand. Travels a good bit. Now, even if they don’t catch Lloyd or one of the others—”
“No, what do you know about Fourrier?”
“James, I never met the man above half a dozen times. Why are you so interested in him?”
“I don’t trust him. And I don’t like the coincidence of him being here now. What kind of business could he have here? Except for the Edwardses, the only ones who think to make big money are the gamblers, and most of them won’t.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. “Just foolishness, I guess. I want to go home.”
“Even if I believed in an evil genius, James, it wouldn’t be him. I don’t like the man, but he’s respectable. I talked with him once about the problems of yanquis in Mexico, and he showed a good grasp. He’s well thought of in Mexico City. Bell and others in San Felipe respect him, too. I don’t know all his business interests, but those I do know are extensive. Cattle, horses, a freight line, shipping along the coast.”
“Land?”
Austin shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard. Do you think he’s involved with Edwards?”
It was James’s turn to shake his head. He wasn’t sure himself what he meant. “It doesn’t matter, Stephen. I’m going home.”
“James—” Austin broke off as José Escobar trotted in, beating dust from his clothes as he hurried to their table. He spoke swiftly.
“Señores, Lloyd, Walters, and some of the others named by Esteban Morales have been taken. They are on their way here under guard. I passed them only a short distance away.”
“Have they implicated Edwards?” Austin asked.
James interrupted him. “Wait a minute, Stephen. There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Escobar’s face was drawn. “Senor Wainwright says they will be tried.”
“And I don’t suppose he means to take them to Saltillo,” James said.
“No, señor. He says they will be tried in Nacogdoches. And hung.”
“What about Marin?” Austin said. “Skelton? Where are they?”
“With the others, Señor Austin. They do not approve, but Senor Wainwright has swayed many.”
In the street a number of mounted men clattered past, most clutching rifles. Through their dust James caught sight of Lloyd, his face twitching with fear.
Austin scraped back his chair. “We’d better see what we can do.”
“One last time,” James said.
The three men headed down the street after the horsemen.
Gerard watched Haden pacing back and forth and wondered, not for the first time, if he had made a mistake in backing the man. Edwards had a cigar in one hand and a whiskey in the other, and he replaced both as needed.
“I don’t understand you,” Edwards growled. “Why shouldn’t Saucedo decide in my favor? I’m the empresario, the grant holder.”
“You aren’t Mexican,” Gerard said quietly.
Edwards mulled that over. “Damn Mexicans,” the broad-faced man muttered. “Damn them all.” He spun to face Gerard. “Why in hell do you want me to hold off on the land? I ought to be selling every acre I can. Damn it, if those bastards are going to throw me out, I’ll God damned well take every dollar with me I can.”
“If you go.”
Edwards sank slowly into a chair, his eyes on Gerard’s face. “All right, Fourrier. Say what’s on your mind.”
“Yes.” Ben Edwards strode into the room. “I’d like to hear why we’re letting Austin and Fallon talk us around like schoolgirls, and why we’re letting a bunch of damned Mexes and poor white trash strut around like they owned everything in sight.”
Gerard scowled. Ben was a foolish swaggerer, hunting for a chance to wave a sword. Once more he reconsidered his plans. But no one else was in place, as the Edwardses were, and God alone knew when another chance would come along.
“I’m still working out a number of things,” he lied. “If you listen to me, though, you’ll end up with more than you dream of.”
Haden opened his mouth, but Ben cut him off. “Why should we listen to you? All you’ve done so far is sit on your ass and tell us to go along with Austin and wait. My maiden Aunt Agatha could match that.”
Once his usefulness was past, Gerard thought, Ben should meet with a fatal accident. “If you start selling land again, Marin and the rest will almost certainly start fighting you. The Army will come in. If you manage to get back across the Sabine without being arrested, you’ll take a thousand dollars with you. Two thousand.”
“And if we wait,” Haden began, then, as his brother started to speak, “Shut up, Ben. If we wait, Fourrier, what do we get? I thought we’d get rich in Texas, but if we have to settle for a few thousand, that’s better than sitting by and letting the Mexes take everything.”
“Is it better than hundreds of thousands of dollars?” Gerard asked slyly, and watched greed light their eyes. The fools couldn’t see farther than a gold piece.
“How?” the elder Edwards said simply.
“That you’ll have to leave to me. If you lack the courage to gamble a paltry few thousand for the chance at hundreds of thousands, now’s the time to throw in your cards and run.” Protest formed on their faces.
“Run!” Ben exclaimed. “I never ran from anything in my life.”
Gerard hid a smile. It had been an excellent choice of words.
Haden said carefully, “I’d still like to know what these plans of yours are.”
“For the time being, you’ll have to settle for what I’ve told you already. When it’s time for you to know more, I’ll send word by a man named Nat Coffee.”
“Coffee,” Ben mused. “I’ve heard that name somewhere.”
“He works for me at times,” Gerard said. “What you must do now is delay, conciliate.”
“Damn it,” Ben began.
“I said conciliate,” Gerard snapped. “Unless you’d rather settle for a pittance and hope you get out before you’re arrested.”
There was a long silence. Then Haden nodded. “We’ll stay.”
Gerard was careful to control his sigh of relief. “Then, as I said, the first thing is to conciliate. Let Austin be your guide on that. He knows how to get on with the Mexicans. Next, you must get as many solid citizens supporting you as possible. Men like Sterne and—”
There was a clatter of feet in the hall, and the door burst open. A beefy man stood in the doorway, wringing his hat in his hands.
“Hogan,” Ben exploded, “what in hell do you mean breaking in like that? You’re supposed to be laying low.”
“They got ’em,” Hogan said. “Got ’em all. Lloyd and the rest. I was out to the necessary was the only reason they didn’t get me.”
“Who has them?” Haden asked.
“Who the hell you think?” Ben said. He was checking the loads in a pair of pistols. “Marin, Skelton, that lot.” Hogan nodded wordlessly.
“Are you forgetting so quickly?” Gerard said.
