Read Santa Fe Woman for Free Online Page A

of the strong coffee. He set his cup down and looked around the table. “Well, I don’t know whether it’s something that will appeal to you or not, but here’s what it is. I guess maybe you don’t know about Santa Fe. It’s a trading center just this side of California. Up until now Spain has owned it, and, I’m tellin’ you folks, she was plumb cutthroat in her taxation! The only way to get any goods there was to go through Vera Cruz, and then the merchandise had to be toted two thousand miles away on pack mules. Well, the cost of all that transportation, the tax, and Spanish merchants there brought the price of goods up some-thin’ fearful. A piece of calico that costs a few cents a yard in Boston sells there for three dollars a yard.”
    Mark leaned forward, his face alight with interest. “Why, that’s an unheard of margin of profit.”
    “I reckon so,” Blanchard nodded. “But it’s so. I took one load myself. It’s a hard tough trip, but I made some money on it.”
    “How far is it?”
    “About eight hundred miles from Missouri, but maybe you heard about the revolution down in Mexico.”
    “I read a little about that,” Kate said. “The Mexicans won their independence, didn’t they?”
    “They sure enough did, ma’am, and that’s changed things pretty sharp. Santa Fe’s wide open now. They ain’t got no other way to get goods except to have the Spanish haul them in from San Francisco, and the Spanish are downright lazy. They won’t be doin’ much haulin’. So, like I told Leland, it’s the right time to jump in and make some money.”
    “I don’t know exactly how to get there,” Jori said uncertainly.
    “Well, look, I got a map right here. It ain’t the best, but you can all come and take a look at it.”They all got up and gathered around the map that Blanchard took from his inner pocket and unfolded. “Right here,” he said, “is Franklin, Missouri, right in the western border. You see this river here? That’s the Kansas River. The trail follows that until it gets to the Arkansas River, and then it hooks around and goes all the way to La Junta. Then you turn north and run along the Sangre de Cristo Mountains right into Santa Fe. Santa Fe is right on the Rio Grande River, don’t you see.”
    “That river goes all the way to Texas.”
    “Yep, it shore does, but it ain’t quite as safe goin’ up from Texas. You have to cross through territories jist crawlin’ with the Comanche and Cherokee and Shawnee. Best to stay away from those red devils if you can.”
    Jori listened as Blanchard spoke glowingly of the profit to be made, but finally she said, “But, Mr. Blanchard, we don’t know anything about freighting.”
    “I didn’t reckon as how you did, Miss Jori, but I thought you might hire a good man to take the train through.”
    “Why don’t you do it, Mr. Blanchard?” Kate said. “You’ve made the trip.”
    “Takes a young man and a tough one. I might have done it in my younger days, Miss Johnson, but I’m past that now.”
    Leland suddenly said, “We always were pretty honest with each other in the old days, Al. I’m going to tell you now that we’re pretty desperate.” He laughed self-consciously and said, “I’ve got to find something to do. So far nothing has turned up. I feel a little bit like a man in the middle of a bridge that doesn’t have any ends and all I can do is look down at the water.”
    “Why, it ain’t that bad, Leland,” Al Blanchard said warmly. “You’re a young man. You can start all over again. I’ve had to do it twice. Lost my shirt in two ventures. But if I can do it, you can too.”
    “How much would it cost to get a train to Santa Fe?”
    “Well, it depends on a lot of things. You’ve got to buy wagons and lots of mules or oxen. Then you got to buy the trade goods, and then at the other end of the line you have to pay the mule skinners off. It will take a bunch of them.”
    “How big should the train be?”
    “I’d say