Chapter 1

Friday, July 3, 1891

DeWitt:

The fateful telegram was hand-delivered by our stationmaster.

We were at a social gathering in Santa Fe, at the New Mexico Territorial capitol’s historic, though rather modest, Palace of Governors, built by the Spanish in sixteen-ten. Most of the guests were gathered in the open central patio, where I stood in the shadows trying to be inconspicuous.

I had placed myself partially behind an archway support, that arch giving way into the Palace’s main corridor, which led eventually to the kitchen behind the building. At the moment, that passage was the avenue for the comings and goings of the waiters who were serving drinks and canapes to the guests. Those guests, mostly well-to-do men, had been invited by New Mexico Territorial Governor L. Bradford Prince. Governor Prince had chosen the eve of Independence Day to host what amounted to a statehood rally.

My purpose in being there was to protect the Patron, Emil Malik. He was the Chairman of the Board and President of the Kansas & Arizona Southern Railroad. My assignment had been at the direction of the Jefe, Raul Castillo, the K&ASR’s General Superintendent. My duty was temporary, as I was filling in for the Patron’s usual bodyguard, the exotic and, I had to admit, somewhat scary, Peng Yan. She was at their home in Arenoso, on sick leave.

Opposite me, tucked behind the other side of the wide archway, was a federal deputy marshal named Joe Undine. Joe was assigned as the bodyguard for Governor Prince, who was personally hosting the soiree. There was still lingering unrest in some pueblos and among disenfranchised Mexican rancho families, all a result of land grabs by Anglo opportunists in the decades following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase. As a result, a bodyguard for the governor was not an extravagance. Likewise, the reason I was watching over the Patron (pah-TRONE) more than the Jefe (HEF-ay) was also due to the likelihood of threats. Mister Malik’s life had been one of risk, adventure, and some bloodshed, and not everyone was pleased by his success.

As I watched the interactions on the patio, I noticed the Patron tended to visit with elected and appointed politicians and judges, while the Jefe seemed to speak more with businessmen. In fact, I knew the Jefe intended to try to sell some of our recently acquired compressed-air locomotives. The road had come into possession of some half dozen of the machines, part and parcel of our purchase of the rolling stock of a defunct mining company in Wyoming. We’d used one of those locos to bring us up to Santa Fe from our exchange yard at Lamy where we linked to the AT&SF. The Jefe said the fireless engines would be perfect for underground work in mines or where there was a risk from fire, such as in logging or oil refining. I’d bet it was a mine owner whose ear the Jefe was bending at the moment, as I continued to survey the patio and the corridor.

It was at that moment that our Santa Fe stationmaster, Danek Brazda, out of breath, hurried up to me, having approached from the direction of the kitchen. He handed me one of our telegram envelopes and, between gasps, he said, “This just came in on the company wire.” Even with his urgent manner, he was discreet and spoke quietly, with his Slovak accent barely discernible.

I looked at him for an explanation, but he dropped his gaze toward the envelope. I held the telegram beneath a nearby oil lamp. Brazda hadn’t sealed the envelope and he’d written my name across its front, so I opened the flap, pulled out the form, and read his neat handwriting:

Inspector Wayne Dewitt, K&ASR Security Department, Santa Fe, NMT 03Jul189

Red Angus breeders stolen from relief pasture. Likely 40 heifers, 3 bulls loaded on special orders train No LD910703B departed northbound 8:16 pm this date. 3 security officers with mounts leaving in pursuit via special orders train No LD910703C. ED 9:35 pm date.

Berghofer, K&ASR Yardmaster, Lamy, NMT

A quick check of my pocket watch showed nine twenty-eight. I looked up at Brazda and, before I could ask, he said, “Your officers should be here by ten o’clock or so. That northbound special went through at nine-oh-six.”

Again I gave him a questioning look. He shrugged and said, “We’d received train orders for it from Chama, so it looked to be on the up and up. I never gave it a second thought.” He was shaking his head. Then he tapped the telegram in my hand, “But it’s not only that. Now the wire’s dead to the north.”

Shaking my head, I said, “Well, that puts the skunk in the hen house.” Offering him a grim smile, I added, “Thanks, Mister Brazda. I’ll see to this. You can go on back.” As he turned to leave, I noticed Joe Undine looking at me with a quizzical expression. I shook my head and, making sure no one was close by, said to him, “Problem at our yard down at Lamy.” He gave me a terse nod, looking relieved, then refocused on those gathered around the governor.

I looked out toward the Patron, standing now near the center of the courtyard. He was conversing with a shorter fellow in a somewhat bedraggled frock coat, but he was also glancing at me over the man’s shoulder. I held up the message form and gave a short sideways gesture with my head. He returned a barely perceptible nod, then looked down, smiled and said something to the frock-coated man. The Patron shook his hand, and then he headed my way. [DeWitt]

(Friday, July 3, 1891)

1889

Malik’s courtship of Beatrice Nowak had been facilitated largely by Peng Yan. One might even have said that Malik was a reluctant suitor.

His diffidence was understandable, given his lingering grief at the death of his first wife, Gabriela. Even more, he was still adjusting to several major responsibilities: father of Gabriela’s infant daughter, master to his Chinese bodyguard -- father of her expected child – and finally, the very public position as chief executive of a substantial railroad corporation.

Beyond that, his emotional upheaval was compounded by the supportive, yet highly unconventional, bond which he had formed with Peng Yan, despite his state of mourning. The concubinage upon which she had insisted was not only a concept of foreign shores, but the formal extra-marital bond was totally foreign to the western ideals of proper male-female unions in the Age of Victoria. Nonetheless, there things stood.

However, the convolutions did not end there. The personalities of both Peng Yan and Beatrice Nowak demanded special consideration.

Both women displayed marked submissive traits, though of considerably different dimensions.

Peng Yan’s subservience extended to the totality of her life, giving every part and expression of herself over to Malik’s absolute command. While fully capable of intelligent, even inspired, self- determination, Peng was never more satisfied than when her activities were in direct response to Malik’s orders. Her feelings could be particularly intense when, in more private moments, she would be placed in situations of humiliation or duress.

Beatrice Nowak, on the other hand, sought someone who would dominate her only in situations involving personal relationship intimacies. And, given such tendencies, she proved highly vulnerable to quick, even injudicious, arousal, should Malik evoke those passions through direct commands or even mere suggestions. However, outside of such conditions, Nowak was a determined, self-motivated, and ambitious woman, bowing to no one.

Both women possessed notable intelligence and were highly skilled. Nowak was a successful commercial architect and construction project manager. Peng was an expert in more esoteric fields. The Chinese woman was a speacialist in hand-to-hand combat, the use of a variety of weapons, and proficient in small-unit, irregular military tactics. While it was the skill and intelligence of each woman that first drew Malik’s attention, the fact that both were pleasing to the eye hurt that attraction not in the least.

Peng was on the tall side for a Chinese woman, but with a shape of notably female proportions and alluring facial features. While Nowak may have compared unfavorably with Peng in upper body development, her elfin stature and dark red hair set its own standards. Beyond that was her uncanny resemblance, save for hair color, to Malik’s blonde sister-in-law, Christina, wife of Malik’s younger brother, Andy. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, their resemblance appeared to be of chance rather than of blood, since not even the remotest familial link could be discovered.

Malik’s reluctance in acting on his feelings for Nowak was offset, to some degree, when Beatrice realized, early on, that she desired a long-term liaison with him, else his unenthusiastic approach might have brought things to naught.

At the same time, Peng saw in Nowak, not so much a kindred spirit, as their submissive needs were distinctly different, but more as someone operating on a socio-cultural par closer to that of her Master: a strong, intelligent, attractive woman of proper heritage, possessing notable determination, and with a history of success in her own pursuits. In those traits she was similar to Malik’s first wife, Gabriela.

While hardly wealthy, Nowak had a comfortable income from her work as an architect. More important, however, was her growing professional reputation for excellence in innovation and economy.

Early in her career, she had been awarded several significant contracts through the influence of well-connected friends in the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement. While not personally active in suffragette demonstrations and strikes, Nowak nonetheless supported the cause with frequent donations. In any event, her success with those first design projects led to increasingly substantial contracts.

Then, in 1888, the K&ASR Board of Directors awarded her a contract for the railroad’s depots expansion project. It set her course toward still more success, and a more formidable income. Even before his death, Chen Ming-teh and the executive committee had been impressed with her plans and recommendations to the point that they had asked her to manage the project in its entirety, from design to build-out.

Her Polish surname, Nowak, was compliments of her first husband, Stanley Nowak, from whom she had been divorced, though that marriage was later annulled. By birth, Beatrice was, in fact, of Scandinavian stock. When she was three, her family had emigrated from Denmark to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where her father, Gunnar Madsen, had been hired as general manager of a copper mine.

Although Beatrice had been raised in the Lutheran Church, she had converted to Roman Catholicism when she married her first husband. She continued to attend Catholic services after the divorce. Stanley Nowak eventually remarried, but his fiance had wanted to be married in the Church. So, with Beatrice’s cooperation, Nowak had arranged for his marriage to Beatrice to be annulled, obviating the divorce in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

When Malik demonstrated reluctance to act on his attraction to Nowak, Peng found pretexts to associate with her on her own, and occasionally invented reasons to involve Malik with their social activities. He never objected.

The involvement took on another dimension when Malik assumed the presidency of the railroad and the chairmanship of the K&ASR’s Board of Directors.

The project Nowak was managing for the railroad was a redesign and expansion of a number of the passenger depots, modifying or adding structure to provide retail and office space for the local commercial rental market. It represented a significant investment and a major diversification of services.

On taking office, Malik had begun a routine of regular visits to the various divisions, spending several days of each month on one of the nine branch lines. This practice made him a frequent visitor to those depot renovation sites, often in coincidence to Nowak’s inspection visits to those same sites.

Moreover, as chairman, Malik was the natural choice to represent the railroad at the grand opening ceremonies at each of the completed depot renovations. Nowak, another customary attendee, would, naturally, look to Malik as an escort during any reception festivities.

Finally, as the 1888-89 winter holidays -- Christmas, New Year, Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays -- had loomed, Malik faced the need to host dinner parties and other social business gatherings, as the K&ASR’s chief executive and board chairman.

Even setting aside the rampant prejudice against Chinese, Peng was correct to insist she had not the demeanor to act as the gracious hostess to a group of guests nor to represent the railroad in any significant social capacity. On the contrary, Peng Yan’s experience, in the early tragedies of her home life and in later training in the Dawn of Justice triad, had imbued in her a suspicious attitude and defensive posture. She had extended that defensive aura to Malik, who was, technically, her protection client, as assigned by Fu-Chun Li, the clan leader at Summer Lake. For all of those reasons she was, as a rule, suspicious of others and was neither outgoing nor cordial. For purposes, she could assume the role of an accommodating servant, but Peng had no talent for the idle chit-chat, the credible expressions of interest, nor the general bonhomie that were the stock-in-trade for the successful hostess.

Instead, she took every opportunity to promote Nowak as the likely candidate for that duty, especially in the face of Malik’s dearth of female friends in Wichita. Wren Tsosie traveled with them, caring for his daughter, Aspen, but Wren’s background and experience did not lend itself to more demanding social roles. At the same time, her mixed Navajo-Negro features might have been off-putting in the cultural climate of the American Southwest in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The only other likely candidate was Dixie Yeats, the railroad’s legal counsel, but Yeats had her own, notably younger, social circle. Even more, Peng had surreptitiously enlisted Yeats in her plan to advance Nowak to the role of Malik’s hostess. As a result, Yeats was not an option, should Malik have asked -- which, interestingly enough, he never did.

In consequence, despite Malik’s apparent ambivalence, Beatrice Nowak was often seen on his arm.

(1889)

Friday, July 3, 1891

DeWitt:

When the Patron walked up to me, I handed him the telegram. Reading it, he said, “Damn!” under his breath. Looking up at me, he added, “This is the second time this year.” It was a fact I knew only too well.

I had investigated the first theft, back in mid-March, and I had been stymied. They’d taken six Red Angus yearling bulls by the same method, as best as I could determine. However, in that instance, the theft had not been discovered for some six hours. I found no trace of the bulls or even the locomotive, tender, and livestock car that we assumed must have been used to purloin them. The locomotive’s registration number on the falsified train orders was for an out-of-service unit that was in the engine shed at Chama, torn down for cleaning its boiler, boiler tubes, and fire box.

Moreover, I was aware that this second theft could jeopardize the continuing operation of our relief pasture service at Lamy. The AT&SF would not continue to utilize our service if we could not see to the livestock’s safety, despite the strategic placement of our facility.

The herding and transport of livestock was hard on the animals, often resulting in loss of weight and general dispositional and physical ailments, including a common and debilitating bowel flux. This was especially problematic when a seller was moving high-quality breeding animals in stock cars over thousands of miles. The seller would not want a collection of sickly animals to be stumbling down the loading ramp at the buyer’s end. To mitigate these problems, rest stops for highly-prized stock were often part of the shipping instructions.

The Kansas & Arizona Southern Railroad provided such a rest stop in New Mexico Territory at our intersection with the Acheson, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway -- the AT&SF, or, more familiarly, the Santa Fe. Our road, lately often referred to as the “Kanzona,” had both stock pens and pasturage, all with ample water, adjacent to our exchange yard with the AT&SF at Lamy. Combined with our six-car loading facilities, it made Lamy, roughly mid-way between Kansas City and the west coast along the Santa Fe main line, the best place to rest valuable breeding stock for three-hundred-and-fifty miles in either direction.

The problem was that now it began to look like the livestock relief service had also become prime pickings for cattle thieves. It was not a reputation that would be conducive to the furtherance of that business for the Kanzona.

Speaking quietly, the Patron said, “We need to get a wire up to...” Seeing my expression, his voice trailed off. “Let me guess,” he said, “the wire’s down, too?”

“North of here,” I said, nodding.

He looked toward the floor for a few seconds, then reached into his frock coat pocket and brought out a pencil. Bending over a side table, he appended the telegram’s message:

North wire down. Will pursue w/DeWitt. Emil

I had observed him writing, so I was ready with the envelope, which he set down on the table. He crossed out my name and wrote “Mr. Raul Castillo” above it. Then he slipped the telegram into the envelope and licked the sealing adhesive, which the stationmaster had not utilized. Stopping a passing waiter, he pointed out Castillo and asked that the envelope be delivered to him, handing the waiter a ten cent coin as he did so. Then he turned to me and said, “Let’s go.”

(DeWitt)

(Friday, July 3, 1891)

1889

After the holidays, as that winter wore on, and as Peng finally overcame virtually continuous spells of nausea and began to show a marked bulge of her abdomen, Malik appeared to adjust to the situation with Nowak. Ultimately, he asked Beatrice to accompany him to a Lincoln’s Birthday concert by the United States Marine Corps Band, on a national tour under the leadership of its renowned commander, John Phillip Sousa. He followed that occasion by inviting Nowak to dinner at a popular Wichita steak house. The selection of Saint Valentine’s Day for that outing was a clear signal of Malik’s interest and intent.

(1889)

Friday, July 3, 1891

DeWitt:

When we arrived at the station, the Patron inquired if there were any steam locomotives fired up and nearby. Brazda told us that the nearest live locomotive was at least twenty minutes away, on the Agua Fria spur, filling water tank cars at the Santa Fe River. He added, “I sent a man up to the hotel for your crew, but they’ve gone out, no telling where.”

The Patron blew out in frustration. “Well, that’s that, then,” he said.