Riding toward Dr. Joseph Blazer’s mills—a sawmill and a gristmill, he kept his favorite mule at a slow lope, hoping a check for payment had arrived at Blazers with the mail wagon, even though mail service in this part of the territory was notoriously unreliable.
But as Roberts topped a rise above the mills, he saw a collection of horses in the corrals out back. Aware of the troubles between the so-called Regulators and Dolan’s men, he felt sure the horses belonged to one faction or the other. There could be trouble if Blazer had Regulators as visitors, since he’d been a friend to Billy Matthews and Jimmy Dolan after he’d come to the New Mexico Territory from Texas last year, not without good reason, following a shoot-out with a group of Texas Rangers in Goliad County.
“Hellfire,” Roberts growled, urging his mule toward the mills, anyway. He wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of his way getting the money he was owed. This wasn’t his fight, and it was better to pull stakes now, before things went any further. After the killing of Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady, it seemed like everyone was taking a side. All talk lately had been about how the fight would escalate and it would be hard to remain neutral in something like this, a cattle war pitting powerful men like Catron in Santa Fe and his boys, Lawrence Murphy and Jimmy Dolan, against a man like John Chisum and small ranchers. It could get a man killed, he thought. The time was at hand to go elsewhere, before he became embroiled in the controversy and was asked to employ his guns. Of course, he thought, if worst came to worst and he had to kill a few of them Regulators, the two hundred dollars a man would come in mighty handy.
As he rode closer to the two story house where Dr. Blazer practiced dentistry, he saw George Coe and Dick Brewer come out on the porch.
“Trouble,” Roberts grunted, taking the hammer thong off his Colt .44, then drawing his Winchester from its saddle boot. He would show these Regulators he wasn’t a man to be trifled with, even though an old shotgun wound left so many iron pellets in his left arm he was unable to raise it above his shoulder. He could still shoot.
“Hold it right there, Buckshot!” shouted George Coe, one of the latest area ranchers to join sides with the Regulators. “If you aim to come any closer, you’ll have to leave them guns and walk the rest of the way.”
“Like hell!” “Buckshot” snapped. “Don’t no son of a bitch tell me when I can carry a gun!”
Charley Bowdre and Billy Bonney, the one everyone called the Kid, came out to flank Brewer and Coe. However, this did nothing to discourage Roberts. “You boys back out of the damn way,” he cried, lifting the muzzle of his rifle. “I come to get my mail, an’ by God ain’t nobody gonna stop me. I’ll kill the first bastard who reaches for a gun!”
It was as if Bowdre were intent upon obliging him. Bowdre’s pistol came out.
Roberts fired his Winchester from the hip, sending a slug into Bowdre’s belly, although it struck his belt buckle and ricocheted off into George Coe’s hand, sending the gun he was holding spinning into the dirt.
In the same instant, Roberts jumped off his mule and ran for a corner of the building.
The Kid and Brewer jerked their guns and started firing at him. Every shot was a miss until he was safely behind the adobe wall.
“You boys lookin’ for a fight?” he bellowed. “Then I’ll damn sure give you one!”
Roberts swung around the corner, blasting his rifle into the men on Blazer’s front porch while they were scattering to find cover. His first shot missed the Kid by inches.
Brewer ducked inside the doorway and peered around the doorframe ... it would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Roberts fired. His rifle slug hit Dick Brewer above the eye and came out the back of his head, rupturing his skull. Blood and brains and a plug of his black hair went flying all over the porch.
Brewer slumped to the boards, dead before he landed, his head a pulpy mass of brain tissue and shattered bone.
“You boys want some more?” Roberts cried, jacking another shell into his rifle.
He got an answer, a .44 bullet blasting from the Kid’s gun where he was hidden behind the far corner of the house. The slug struck adobe, bouncing off harmlessly, making a singing sound as it flew away.
Roberts leaned out again and fired. The Kid ducked back to safety, out of the line of fire.
Charley Bowdre poked his head around a rear corner of the house. “Throw it down, Buckshot, or I’m gonna kill you!” he demanded.
Roberts whirled for a shot at Bowdre. Bowdre fired first. A red-hot pain raced through Roberts’ belly, and he staggered back from the force of impact, mortally wounded. While he’d tasted lead before, he never felt pain before like this from the hole in his gut.
An open window into a bedroom of Dr. Blazer’s house gave Roberts the only chance he had. Almost blinded by pain, he made a feeble jump through the window, landing on the floor on his chest with a painful grunt.
He rolled over, attempting to reload his rifle, certain that more Regulators would be coming for him. When the Winchester’s cartridge tube was fully loaded, Roberts came unsteadily to his feet and crept over to a bed, pulling the mattress off to serve as a shield from stray bullets when they rushed him.
Leaning back against the bedroom wall, half hidden behind a thick mattress, he waited, trying to stem the flow of blood pouring from his belly wound.
“I’m gutshot,” he groaned quietly. He knew few men could survive a belly wound like his, but he vowed silently to take a few Regulators with him when he went. He’d already downed their leader, Dick Brewer. Maybe he could get a few more.
“Come out with your hands empty!”
Roberts did not recognize the voice.
“We got you surrounded!” another said. “You ain’t gonna get out alive ’less you toss out them guns.”
“To hell with you!” he shouted back. “Come an’ get me, if you got the nerve.”
A silence followed.
“We got your mule, Buckshot. You’ll never get out of here! Give it up now!”
“Ain’t my way of doin’ things!” he answered. “You boys come for me. I’ll take you with me to a grave!”
“You’re bein’ stupid, Buckshot. There’s ten of us, an’ just one of you!”
His stomach was killing him. Blood was pooling on the floor all around him.
“Never was one to worry bout the odds against me!” he said after placing a hand over his belly. “I can kill a bunch of you if you try an’ rush me.”
Another longer silence.
“We’ll wait you out, you ole’ bastard. After you bleed for a few hours, you won’t be so damn disagreeable.”
“Maybe,” he answered, softer, feeling his head reel with the pains shooting through him. “Only way you’re gonna find out is to rush me.”
“Stop bein’ a damn fool.”
“Always was a bit of a fool,” Roberts replied, taking his hand off the hole in his abdomen when he felt it grow wet with blood.
“You aim to die?” another voice asked from the back of the house.
“If I have to. You boys callin’ yourselves Regulators ain’t got me killed just yet.”
A small man named John Ryan, a part-time storekeeper at the Murphy and Dolan store, was a friend of Roberts. He offered to take a white flag of truce close enough to the house for Roberts to see him, an offer Roberts heard through the open window.
Ryan took a handkerchief and came around one side of a barn near the sawmill.
“Hey Buckshot!” he shouted. “Dr. Appel from Fort Stanton is on the way here. I know you got a bullet in you. Stop shootin’ long enough fer him to look at yer wound.”
“Don’t need no damn help from some army doctor,” Roberts shouted back. “I’m killin’ any son of a bitch who gets close to this window or the door.”
“You gotta listen to me, Buckshot. These boys ain’t gonna rush you. You done killed Dick Brewer. They ain’t got the nerve to rush you.”
“To hell with every last one of ’em. All I
wanted was a letter addressed to me from Saint Louis.”
The pain in Roberts’ abdomen was worsening, and he feared he would lose consciousness. He moved a bit closer to the window frame and looked out.
Men with rifles were hidden all around Dr. Blazer’s house. He could see the glint of their rifle barrels in the late day sun.
“Don’t do this no more, Buckshot,” Ryan pleaded. “Let the sawbones have a look at you.”
“I’m gutshot, John.”
“Maybe the army doc can help you, anyhow.”
“Nobody lives through a belly wound. I’m gonna die, but I damn sure aim to take some of them Regulators with me when I have to go.”
“That don’t make no sense,” Ryan argued. “What did Tunstall or these Regulators ever do to you?”
Blood came in shorter, thicker bursts from the hole in his gut, and he felt himself growing weaker he could smell the acrid scent of his body wastes leaking from his ruptured bowels onto the floor.
“Got nothin’ to do with it. I ain’t lettin’ ’em take me.”
“You gotta be sensible. No reason for you to lay there an’ bleed to death.”
“I done killed Brewer. Maybe one or two more. I couldn’t get no fair trial in this Territory.”
“It won’t matter if you bleed to death, Buckshot. Toss out that rifle an’ give yourself up.”
“The hell with you. I’m stayin’.”
“But you’re liable to die,” Ryan begged, crouching down with his white truce flag between his knees.
“A man’s gotta die sooner or later,” Roberts answered, his voice failing him due to weakness. “Let them Regulators come at me. I’ll make ’em pay real dear.”
“You right sure you’re mind’s made up?” Ryan asked, backing up a low hill to the safety of a stand of pinon pines east of the Blazer home.
“I’m damn sure of it. Get the hell away from here,” was Roberts’ reply.
* * *
Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts died before dawn the next morning, as Dr. Appel from the army post at Fort Stanton arrived. Dick Brewer was obviously dead. Frank Coe had a severe wound to his hand, requiring the amputation of his thumb and forefinger.
Dick Brewer and Andrew Roberts were buried side by side at Blazer’s Mills the next day, two enemies who had never met.
And with the death of “Buckshot” Roberts came a new enemy for the Regulators: The United States Army from nearby Fort Stanton.
The Kid escaped without a scratch. However, more was to come his way before the Lincoln County War came to an end . . .
Twenty-three
For four days Sheriff Peppin’s posse had Alexander McSween’s house in Lincoln surrounded. The Kid was growing edgy, as were many of the others. Almost twenty Regulators had been recruited, gathering at McSween’s to execute the warrants for Jesse Evans, Sheriff Peppin, and several more. Shortly after the killing of Sheriff Brady, George Peppin was sworn in as sheriff and granted warrants for the arrest of the Regulators by powerful men close to the territorial governor. Both sides claimed to represent the law.
“Doc” Scurlock had been named captain of the Regulators after the killing of Dick Brewer, although everyone listened to McSween’s counsel.
José Chavez, a new Regulator, was standing near a front window when he announced, “Here comes trouble.”
The Kid came to the window, peering out with his rifle in his hands.
More than fifty uniformed soldiers from Fort Stanton came riding and marching into Lincoln—a dozen cavalrymen and the rest infantrymen.
“Looks like the army’s gonna take a hand in this,” the Kid said.
“They got no authority against us,” Scurlock said. “This is a civilian matter.”
McSween opened his front door a crack. “With or without the proper authority, it appears Colonel Dudley has decided to take sides with Sheriff Peppin and Jimmy Dolan.”
“They bring a howitzer cannon and a Gatling gun,” Chavez remarked, frowning.
“A cannon will blow these walls to pieces,” McSween said quietly.
“We’ll shoot the first son of a bitch who tries to aim it at us,” Jim French said, almost fully recovered from his leg wound.
The Kid watched Colonel Dudley direct his men to move into the hills around McSween’s adobe home. Some of Dolan’s men went with the soldiers, breaking up into small groups to take up stations against the house.
“Look at that, boys. Men from the posse are hunkerin’ down with the soldiers. Guess they think we’ll be afraid to shoot at ’em if’n they’re next to a blue belly.”
Jim French snorted. “Huh, then they got another think comin’. If them soldier boys didn’t wanna get shot at, they shouldn’t have come to Lincoln.”
“They’ve got us cornered now,” the Kid said. “We gotta keep ’em from cuttin’ us off to the river. It may be our only way out.”
“They can’t do this!” Scurlock insisted. “We have the legal authority and the warrants to arrest Peppin and every son of a bitch who was in that posse.”
The Kid recalled his conversation with Falcon MacCallister at the cabin. “My friend from up north, MacCallister, said the governor invalidated our warrants an’ took away our authority as constables.”
“No one has informed me,” McSween said, watching Dudley’s troops scatter, forming a semi-circle around his house. “The governor overstepped his bounds if he did something like that without good reason.”
“He’s in Murphey an’ Dolan’s pockets,” Scurlock said with anger filling his voice. “Tom Catron up in Santa Fe is behind every bit of this.”
“We’re gonna have to shoot our way out of here,” the Kid remarked.
“The Kid is right,” Chavez said.
Jim French was at another window. “Look yonder, boys. One of Peppin’s men is tryin’ to sneak up on this side where them trees are the thickest carryin’ a torch. They aim to burn us out, looks like.”
“It’s adobe,” Scurlock said.
McSween looked at the rafters above them. “But the roof is made of wood. It’s dry as tinder. If they are able to set the roof ablaze, we’ll have to come out or the smoke will surely kill us.”
The Kid looked over his shoulder at McSween. “And you got your wife and the other women and children in the east wing of the house to worry about. The way this wind’s blowin’, fire would catch ’em ’fore they could get quit of the house.”
Without waiting for instructions, French fired his rifle out the window.
“You got the bastard!” Chavez cried.
A deputy working for Sheriff Peppin lay writhing in the dirt with a burning torch lying beside him.
“Nice shot,” Scurlock said, grinning.
“It was a good shot,” the Kid agreed after he saw the wounded deputy.
Answering rifle fire came pouring from the hills around the adobe and from the fire tower of a nearby house where some Dolan sharpshooters were stationed, smashing glass windowpanes, thudding into adobe walls and the roof.
“Look!” Chavez exclaimed. “Three of them soldiers is tryin’ to turn that cannon on us.”
“Shoot ’em down!” Scurlock snapped, raising his rifle to his shoulder.
The Regulators blasted away at the infantrymen around the howitzer. Two soldiers dropped to the ground while the other fled to cover.
Sue McSween, Alexander’s wife, had refused to leave the house before the shooting started. She now pointed to a rear window and let out a scream.
“What is it?” McSween cried, rushing to the window to see what had upset his wife.
Another of Peppin’s deputies stood near a low adobe wall running up to the back porch. The deputy threw an oil-soaked torch up on the roof and ducked down behind the wall.
“Fire!” McSween yelled. “They managed to throw a burning stick up on the roof.”
The Kid could see things taking a deadly turn. Instead of a standoff, the tide was turning toward Peppin’s forces with the arrival of the soldiers
.
“What time is it?” the Kid shouted at McSween.
McSween, a puzzled look on his face, pulled his pocket watch from his vest and opened the face. “It’s a quarter to eight. Why?” he asked.
“ ’Cause it’ll be full dusk ’bout eight o’clock. I say we need to make a run for the river out the back, ’fore that fire burns the place down around us.”
McSween sank to his knees, kneeling and leaning against the wall. It was plain that his courage was failing, and he was becoming more apathetic by the minute. He seemed almost in a state of emotional collapse.
The Kid realized someone needed to take charge or they would all die in this house.
“We can stick it out until dusk,” he told the others, “if the fire doesn’t burn any faster than it is now. Some of us are certain to get hit, but most of us can make it across the river. It’s only a few hundred yards, and if we run fast and shoot fast, we can hold off Peppin’s crowd so they can’t do us much damage.”
He turned to Mrs. McSween, regarding her with sympathy. “I expect, ma’am, you had better leave first. A dress ain’t very good to make a run in.”
Mrs. McSween glanced over at her husband, cowering against a far wall, and agreed to leave early enough so that she wouldn’t impede the others when the time to make their break came.
“I’ll take a couple of volunteers with me, an’ we’ll run out first to draw the fire of Dolan’s men and the soldiers.” He looked over and spoke to McSween. “That’ll give you and the others a chance to slip out undetected and get to safety.”
Everyone in the room agreed, standing tall and proud and showing no fear, except Ignacio Gonzalez, who had taken to whimpering and crying since he had been wounded in the arm.
The Kid turned to him, his face red and flushed from anger. “You damn coward!” the Kid said contemptuously, “I’ve got a great mind to hit you over the head with my pistol. We are going to stick here until it’s full dark. Brace up and behave like a man.”
Finally, dusk and darkness came to Lincoln. The Kid realized it was now or never.
“Let’s make for the river now!” the Kid shouted, as more rifle fire came at them from the hills. “It’s nearly dark out there.”
Song of Eagles Page 15