Chapter 19

Friday, July 13, 1894

Castillo’s telegram caught up with him in Denver, enroute to Waypoint, where his family awaited.

Decoded, the text read:

Standard Oil knows about the common rebates. The Southern Pacific has closed the exchange yard at Liberal.

He sent:

Acknowledge SO aware rebates, SP closed Liberal. Will advise soonest.

By the time his train reached Pueblo, he had prepared the following response to Castillo:

Recommend closing all five SP exchange yards with immediate effect. Proceeding Wichita.

After consulting with Peng, he sent the following message home:

Trouble at the office. Trip home postponed one week. Upon arrival, family will take two-week camping trip Flat Grass Valley Smoky Valley. Invite Andy et al. Yan and Schroeder arriving Summer Lake late Saturday.

(Friday, July 13, 1894)

Sunday, July 15, 1894

Malik pushed back from the table, patted his belly, and said, “it’s good to have friends who will tolerate one’s gluttony.”

Castillo chuckled. “Rita knows how much you like her fried chicken.” He patted his wife’s hand, where it rested on the edge of the table. “I suppose I must confess to an increased appetite when I know it is to be served.”

Rita, with an indulgent smile, said, “Enough flattery, you two. You’ve each earned a piece of strawberry pie.” She stood, and both men came to their feet. “I’ll make more coffee and some whipped cream, and be back with the pie in a few minutes. Just let me clear some of these dishes.”

Malik, with a covetous glance at the serving platter still on the table, said, “Does that mean I still have time to eat a chicken wing?”

Rita laughed. “They’re small, have a couple.” Rita Castillo had personally prepared the two chickens, as their cook-housekeeper only worked Monday through Friday.

With Rita in the kitchen, the two men reseated themselves, and Castillo asked, “All those murdered women; it is difficult to fathom. Was your experience overly gruesome?”

“Not directly, until we caught up with Gorlitz and his wife. Up to that point it was all speculation. The worst of it was having known Rosario Gonzaga and then being with Barbara in her grief. But we never actually saw any of the bodies. Well, Bill did, their last victim, but by that time, we were in pursuit.”

“Apparently, such multiple murders are not an unknown phenomenon,” Castillo said, polishing his reading glasses, a recent addition. “There was a series of murders in Cincinnati, after the War, in which a boarding house proprietor was poisoning certain of her male boarders. She killed five men before she was found out. Another instance, in Mississippi, purports that two men, brothers, were killing and supposedly eating young Negro women.” Castillo shook his head and feigned a shiver. “They are thought to have killed and consumed as many as two dozen young women over the course of ten years, in and around Jackson. And there are similar reports from elsewhere.”

“You researched this?”

“I asked Ethel Roberts to look into it. She knows her way around a library. She took a couple clerks along to show them how such things are done.” Ethel Roberts was the head writer in the Kanzona’s advertising department.

Malik, his chin resting on his chest, was shaking his head. “Well, as bizarre as it may sound, I have to admit to feeling a bit relieved. I’ve been trying to figure out why one of our own men, one of our law enforcement officers, could have gone so appallingly bad. He and his wife, too. I thought maybe we were doing something wrong, that would drive a man to such extremes.”

“No,” Castillo said, in comforting tones. “People have their own reasons, whether those reasons make sense to others or not. The men that were killing those colored girls thought that they were serving the commands of Nathan Bedford Forrest, whom they had lionized. They apparently were but semi-literate and one of them misread one of Forrest’s famous quotations, ‘I’ve got no respect for any young man who won’t join the colors.’ He thought it said, ‘I’ve got no respect for any young man who won’t joint the coloreds.’ They thought it was a command to eat Negroes.” Castillo shrug showed his own perplexity.

Then Castillo asked, “But you think that it was Donna Gorlitz’s disfigurement that led to those killings?”

“I can’t be sure, but there was that injury, of course, and then her mother had died, and his pay was cut because of our austerity measures. It was either that accumulation or a very unlikely coincidence. For all that, we can’t even be sure which one was doing the actual killing. The only thing we can know for certain is that they did it.”

“How is that?”

“We searched their house and, in a shoe box, under their bed, we found a lock of hair mounted to an index card for each of the dead women. The names and dates were written in Donna’s hand.”

“Incredible.”

“Here we are,” Rita said, as she came through the door, in each hand a dessert plate with a slice of whipped cream-lavished fresh strawberry pie.

(Sunday, July 15, 1894)

Monday, July 16, 1894

Malik spent most of Monday morning recounting the events in Casper to Arnie Yeats, Pete Pottinger, and the recently minted Dixie Tremaine. It was an hour after lunch when Dixie and Castillo came into his office through the open conference room door.

Castillo said, “Southern Pacific took the bait.” He held a sheaf of blue-covered legal pages in front of him. “They’re suing us for twenty-five thousand per day, per branch, for breach of contract.”

“That didn’t take long,” Malik observed. “Per business day?”

Dixie said, “Per calendar day.”

“So, one hundred seventy-five thousand per branch, every seven days?”

Castillo said, “No, only a hundred thousand, for the four yards we closed, not the one they closed.

Dixie nodded her head.

“And the current share price of Southern Pacific stock?”

Dixie said, “Twelve and a quarter, and it’s been falling steadily for months.”

“And we have to respond by when?”

“Within ten business days, so, two weeks today, by...,” Castillo said, as he looked at the time certification on the cover sheet, “one thirty-six PM.”

“Well, best not wait until the last minute. Let’s get our response in by noon that Monday,” Malik said.

(Monday, July 16, 1894)

Thursday, July 19, 1894

At the Executive Committee meeting, Malik asked, “New business?”

Arnie Yeats immediately said, “What’s going on with the Southern Pacific? We’re losing twelve or thirteen thousand a day, with all those exchange terminals being closed.”

Dixie Tremaine said, “The Southern Pacific claims to be losing twenty-five thousand per day for each branch.”

“Twenty-five thousand? And per division?” Yeats said. “That hardly seems likely.”

“I agree,” Castillo said, “but that is the number in their breach of contract suit for the four yards we closed.”

“They’re suing us?” Pete Pottinger scoffed.

Yeats said, “Hold on. Are you saying they’re suing us for a hundred thousand dollars a day? What in the hell are we gonna do?”

Malik said, “We’re giving them plenty of rope to hang themselves.”

“But even if we counter sue for them closing the Kansas Southern Division, we’d still lose four dollars to their one,” Yeats said.

“I’m sure that’s what they think, too, Dad,” Tremaine said. “But the situation isn’t what they think.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t we both in breach?”

“Not the way the contract is structured,” Malik replied. “We don’t have a separate contract with the SP for each division. All the exchange agreements are governed by the same contract, as a group, all under the same terms. The first breach voided the entire contract.”

“Surely they must realize that,” Yeats insisted.

“I don’t think they do,” Malik said, “else we’d have heard from them by now. I’m sure they think they have the standard contract terms, but Raul offered to consolidate the contracts for them when it came up for renewal two years ago, and he abridged the boilerplate. They never noticed. I’ll bet they didn’t even review the contract before they shut off the Kansas Southern.”

Yeats asked Castillo, “Why would you have done that? Aren’t we equally as vulnerable?”

“Anticipating the fiscal crash,” Castillo explained, “I expected that the Southern Pacific, like the other major roads, was more likely to have performance problems than we would, and that they would be more likely to cause a breach. Their bowing to the pressure from Standard Oil simply brought it about more deliberately. In any event, I structured the contract so that we could either sue for damages or renegotiate for all the divisions, once the SP stumbled.”

“Then what’s the plan?” Pottinger wanted to know.

“On July thirtieth,” Tremaine said, “we answer their suit with a counter-suit, Uncle Pete. We’ll charge them with breach and seek damages based on their own figures, twenty-five thousand dollars per calendar day, per each of the five divisions. For the fourteen elapsed days, that will represent one million seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, with another one hundred twenty five thousand for each additional day they remain in breach.”

Pottinger released a breathy whistle at the amount.

“However,” Malik said, “what we will actually settle for, out of court, are cash damages of one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars, plus one million one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars in Southern Pacific stock, and a reinstatement of the breached contract.”

“Which will represent a bargain for them,” Dixie Tremaine said, a feral smile playing about her pretty lips.

(Thursday, July 19, 1894)

Tuesday, July 24, 1894

“Daddy,” Aspen pleaded, “tell us about Auntie Aspen, the Indian Princess. Tell us about the time she sailed away on her boat and got lost at sea because her mean brother tricked her, and then she was rescued by the handsome cowboy. Emily’s never heard the story from you.”

Malik laughed to himself at the enhancements with which Aspen’s imagination had embellished the actual episode. That afternoon, he, Peng, Beatrice, Andy, and Christina had brought the children to wade and splash in Flat Grass Creek, a few hundred feet north of the Tsosie ranch compound, nearby the campsite the Malik families had established.

The children included his own: Aspen, Paul, Gunnar, and Robin; Andy’s Luke; Matilda’s Emily (Matilda had remained at Ranch Home); and four Tsosie grandchildren. After nearly an hour playing in the shallow, chill water, most of them were stretched out on the long grass along the creek bank, in the shade of the cottonwoods, eating cookies that Tilly Tsosie had baked that morning. The youngest of the children were beginning to nod off as the occasional warm breeze rustled the cottonwood leaves.

“Alright, alright,” Malik conceded, as he lowered himself to the ground, his back against a tree trunk. The two girls sat down facing him on either side of his outstretched legs. “But did you know her adventure actually took place right here, in this very creek?” Both shook their heads. “Well it did, but we need to get our facts straight,” Malik insisted.

“First of all, she floated away on a raft, she didn’t sail away in a boat. Second,” he was holding up additional fingers as he counted, “she didn’t get lost, and third, her brother didn’t trick her, she got confused. And last but not least, her brother’s name was Cowboy, Emily’s father, and he’s the one who caught up with her and saved her from floating all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, maybe even all the way to Timbuktu.”

Aspen, still three months shy of her seventh birthday, was pouting. “I like it better the way I tell it.”

“Well, then maybe you should tell the story,” her father challenged.

“Yes, you tell it,” Emily urged.

Aspen yawned. “I will, in a minute,” she said, laying back, stretching out her arms. “The grass feels warm where it’s in the sun,” she said. “Oh, look at that cloud.” Pointing, she yawned again, the yawn briefly distorting her voice. “Eh ‘ooks like a rabbit with three ears.”

Malik laid down between her and Emily, who also had lazed back. Considering the cloud in question, he said, “Nah, there’re only two ears. That one in the middle is a feather he’s wearing. That means he’s going on the warpath.”