“Did it work?” Falcon asked.
“So far, but it’s a temporary solution. With Judge Bristol in his pocket, Dolan can have damn near anything he wants in these parts.”
He took another deep drink of his whiskey, his eyes clouded with remembered hate for Jimmy Dolan.
“So, that’s what’s behind your sudden change of heart, and why you abandoned the Regulators and Billy Bonney?”
Chisum turned rheumy eyes back to Falcon.
“That’s about the size of it. When I realized Dolan and his friends weren’t having to pay any taxes, I figured the best thing for me to do was swallow my pride and join in with them.”
He sighed, stubbing out his cigar in an ashtray on the desk.
“Hell, it’s the only way I could see to save this spread I’ve spent the last fifteen years building.”
Falcon nodded. “I can see that, John, but the Kid and his friends could sure of used your help when they came asking.”
“That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, Falcon, turning them boys down when they asked for my help.” He looked down at his big hands, clasped in front of him. “I haven’t slept a good night’s sleep since I did it.”
Falcon almost felt sorry for the rancher. He knew that when a man was between a rock and a hard place, he sometimes didn’t always have the luxury of making the right decision.
“Well, John, maybe what I’m about to tell you will help make you sleep a little better. The Kid didn’t hold any hard feelings toward you for what you did. He understood more than you think he did. He didn’t know why you suddenly changed sides, but he knew you were an honorable man, and told me you must have had good reason.”
“I liked that boy, Falcon. I kept hoping by my refusal to give him money to continue his fight, he’d have to leave the territory. I figured that was the only way he’d ever survive the Lincoln County war.”
He pulled another cigar from his humidor and lighted it. Through blue clouds of smoke, he said, “I guess I was wrong about him leavin’, but I was damn sure correct about him not surviving the fracas.”
“Don’t be too sure about that, John.”
“What! What are you talking about, Falcon? The Kid’s dead and buried over at Fort Sumner, didn’t you hear?”
“My dad had an old saying, John. He used to tell me, ’Son, don’t believe anything you hear, and only half what you see’.”
Chisum leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “Are you tellin’ me those stories ’bout Garrett shootin’ the wrong man are true?”
Falcon shook his head. “No, John, I’m not telling you anything, and I especially don’t want you repeating those crazy tales of someone else being buried in the Kid’s coffin.”
Chisum leaned back with narrowed eyes, thinking over what Falcon was saying, and, more importantly, what he wasn’t saying.
“So,” he said, a small grin of relief on his face, “I guess that feller out there with you who was ready to take on the whole Apache tribe was a real fighter, someone who goes ahead no matter what the odds are? I bet he’s kind’a small like, but fights like any two men?”
Falcon nodded, but held up his hand. “Let’s say no more about that, John. There’s already enough rumors going around, and, if I were you, and if you value your friendship with the Kid, I’d do everything I could to put a stop to that kind of talk.”
Chisum nodded slowly, thinking about what Falcon meant.
“In fact,” Falcon continued, “that’s what I was coming here to talk to you about, when we ran into those Indians.”
“What can I do to help . . . uh ... put those ugly, untrue rumors to rest, Falcon?”
“Well, Pat Garrett has been trying to get the governor to authorize the payment of the reward for killing the Kid. So far, he’s been stonewalled.”
Chisum sat back in his chair, sipping his drink now instead of gulping it. Falcon thought he could almost see the worry wrinkles fading as the man realized his betrayal hadn’t meant the death of the Kid.
“I thought, maybe, if you and some other prominent citizens got together and raised some money for the reward, the talk of the Kid still being alive might kind of die down.”
Chisum considered it a moment, then leaned forward and slapped his hand down on his desk.
“I’ll do it, by God! I’ll give Garrett a thousand dollars of my own money, and I’ll see to it that Dolan and his partners come up with some more.”
“There’s one more thing, John.”
“Yes?”
“I know Pat’s going to want to run for reelection to sheriff. It might be better if you could put a bug in Dolan’s ear that he should perhaps support Kimball for sheriff.”
“Why?”
“Because, the sooner Garrett’s out of Lincoln County, the sooner the Kid and the Regulators will be just an old memory.”
“Well, I don’t think that will be too hard. Since Garrett’s killed the Kid, he ain’t been too popular around the area, anyway. For all the tales of the Kid running rampant through the countryside, most of the people of Lincoln County considered him a friend, and most of ’em don’t have a lot of good things to say about the man who murdered him.”
“Then we understand each other?”
Chisum stared Falcon in the eye, and Falcon could see that he’d lifted a tremendous burden off the rancher, who had evidently been blaming himself for the Kid’s death.
“Completely. And I’ll do everything in my power to squelch those rumors ’bout the Kid still bein’ alive.”
He hesitated, ’Course, I’d be mighty embarrassed were the Kid to show up in these parts later.”
“Won’t happen, John. You have my word. If, and I emphasize the word if, the Kid were still alive, I can promise you he would become a new man and light out for parts unknown, under another name so no one would ever know he was still alive.”
Chisum stood up and held out his hand.
“Falcon, I can’t tell you what this visit has meant to me. For the first time since the burial, I can go around with my head held high again.”
“You’ve absolutely no reason not to, John. As Shakespeare once said, “All’s well that ends well’.”
Forty
When Falcon approached his cabin after leaving John Chisum’s South Spring Ranch, he saw three horses in his corral, eating hay and making themselves at home.
He eased off Diablo and walked to the back of the cabin, walking on his toes so as not to make any sounds. He doubted if his company was hostile—otherwise they wouldn’t have left their horses in plain view—but he hadn’t lived this long without being careful.
He filled his right hand with iron, pulled the back door open with his left hand, and stepped inside, immediately moving to the side with his back against a wall so he wouldn’t be silhouetted against the open door.
One of the three men sitting at his table looked up, then turned to the others. “See, I told you he’d come loaded for bear.”
Seeing the men sitting there, drinking coffee with their hands in plain sight on the table, Falcon relaxed and holstered his pistol.
The men’s faces were vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place their names.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Mind if I join you in that coffee?”
“No, go right ahead,” a tall, lanky man said. “We boiled plenty, an’ it’s good and strong.”
Falcon poured himself a cup, tasted it, then added a little water with a dipper from the pail on his counter.
“Whew,” he said, “this stuff’s strong enough to float a horseshoe.”
A second man, broad through the middle, with a beard and moustache, said, “Sorry ’bout that. We been on the trail a good ways an we needed something to keep us awake ’til you got here.”
Falcon leaned back against the kitchen counter, his feet crossed at the ankles, sipped his coffee, and watched the men, waiting for them to explain who they were and why they were at his cabin in the middle of the night.
The
tall, thin man built himself a cigarette, struck a lucifer on the heel of his boot and lighted it. Then he leaned back, coffee in one hand and butt in the other.
“Falcon, my name’s Josiah G. Scurlock, but everybody just calls me Doc.” He inclined his head toward his companions, “This here is Henry Brown and John Middleton.”
Falcon nodded. Now he remembered. These men had been among the first group to join together and call themselves Regulators.
“Howdy, boys. To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the last of the Regulators?”
Scurlock smiled. Evidently he was to be the spokesman for the group.
“We hear you were a good friend to the Kid, always there when he needed you, an’ we also hear rumors it was you took out Jesse Evans and a couple of his boys.”
Falcon smiled and sipped his coffee, watching the men over the rim of his cup. He wondered where this was leading.
When Falcon didn’t answer, Scurlock continued.
“When John Tunstall was killed, a group of friends and former employees of his joined together, to avenge his death.”
He took a deep drag on his cigarette, then tipped smoke out of his nostrils as he talked. “When Bob Widenmann, Dick Brewer, Charley Bowdre, Fred Waite, the Kid, and us joined up, Falcon, we took a blood oath. We swore an oath to remain loyal to each other no matter what happened, and to make sure whoever killed John was punished.”
Falcon began to see where this was heading, but he just nodded and listened.
“Now, we ain’t exactly proud of what we done back when things were getting hot and heavy. When the Kid got indicted for killin’ Sheriff Billy Brady I was in Kansas, and both Middleton and Brown here were out of town, also.”
Falcon stepped over to the stove and refilled his coffee mug, not adding water this time. He realized this was going to take a while, and he was bone tired from a long day.
“Go on,” he said, taking out a cigar and lighting it.
“Well, by the time I heard the news ’bout the Kid’s arrest, he was already out of jail and on the run, so I didn’t figure I needed to come back here and tell the truth.” He looked down at this hands, folded on the table. “Falcon, it was me put those slugs in Brady, not the Kid.”
Falcon stared at Scurlock. So the Kid was telling the truth when he told me he didn’t kill Brady, he thought.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, all of us, the Kid included, did plenty of things we could ’a gone to jail for, but we was acting as deputies, duly sworn and appointed.”
“Cut to the chase,” Brown said, looking as tired as Falcon felt. He looked over at Falcon, “What Doc is tryin’ to say in his typical long-winded way is that we’re all feelin’ mighty guilty that we took an oath to stick together and then, when the going got rough, we lit out and left the Kid to do our work, an’ he got himself killed for it.”
Falcon kept his mouth shut. No matter how good friends these were of the Kid, too many people already knew he was alive, he wasn’t about to tell anyone else the truth.
John Middleton nodded, his knuckles white where he was gripping his tin mug. “Yeah, so now we’re back and we want to finish what we started, and make those that killed Tunstall, and the Kid, pay.”
Falcon, his legs and butt aching from too many hours in the saddle, joined them at the table.
“And just how do you boys intend to do that?”
Scurlock crushed out his cigarette in a dish. “We’re gonna kill Dolan an’ the hired killers he’s got with him.”
Falcon shook his head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?” Brown said.
“First off, he’s too well-connected, and too well-protected. If you did manage to kill him, his friends in Santa Fe and the army would never stop until all you men were hunted down and killed, or hanged.”
“We’re willin’ to take our chances,” Middleton said. “We owe it to the Kid, and the others who got killed tryin’ to do what we all promised to do.”
Falcon wagged his head again. “No, I think there’s a better way.”
“What’s that?” Scurlock asked.
“Why not go after the men who did Dolan’s dirty work for him? The Seven Rivers gang and the Doña Aña bunch, led by John Kinney.”
Scurlock nodded, thinking on it.
“Those men are all known outlaws, and no one would mind overly much if you took them out. You could hit fast and hard and get away clean, and you wouldn’t have John Law on your trail for the rest of your lives.”
“Would that hurt Dolan?”
“In the worst way. He’d no longer have them to do his bidding, and he’d lose all the cattle these men have been stealing to fulfill his government contract to supply beef to the Mescaleros. It would cripple his operations here in Lincoln County.”
The three men looked at each other for a moment, then Scurlock turned to Falcon. “Would you be willin’ to ride with us?”
Falcon pursed his lips, then sighed. “I don’t usually join causes, but in this case I might make an exception. These gangs have been riding roughshod over the entire county, and it’s time someone took them down.”
“How will we go about it?” Brown asked.
Falcon leaned forward, “I’ve got a plan. Here’s what we’ll do . . .”
* * *
The next evening, just before sunset, Falcon and the other three were on a ridge overlooking an area near Mesilla where the Seven Rivers gang was camped. There were close to two hundred head of stolen cattle the gang was preparing to drive to Santa Fe to sell to the government for Dolan.
Falcon put his binoculars down and looked at the other men.
“I count about twenty men. That makes it about four to one against us. You boys ready?”
Scurlock pulled his pistol out, opened the loading gate and spun the cylinder, checking his loads. “Ready,” he said.
The men climbed on their horses. “We’ll ride in fast and hard, out of the west so’s the sun’ll be at our backs,” Falcon said.
He wrapped Diablo’s reins around his saddle horn, pulled his Winchester .4440 carbine out of his saddle boot, levered a round into the chamber, and loosened the hammer thong on his Colt sidearm.
Henry Brown put his reins in his teeth and pulled a Greener ten gauge, short-barreled shotgun from his saddle boot, filling his pockets with extra shells.
John Middleton filled both his hands with pistols, and stuck a third in the front of his pants, behind his belt for quick access.
They were ready to ride.
Scurlock looked at the others. “For the Kid,” he said.
Falcon smiled and nodded. “And for all the other men these bastards have killed.”
They leaned forward in their saddles and spurred their mounts, bounding over the ridge to ride out of the sun straight into the outlaws’ camp.
As the four horses raced down the hill, several men in the camp, sitting around the fire drinking coffee and whiskey, looked up.
John Beckwith, the leader, said, “What the hell?”
Wallace Olinger, the brother of the man Kid shotgunned to death in his escape from jail, dropped his coffee cup and grabbed for his rifle, leaning against a nearby tree.
Falcon, pistol in his left hand and rifle in his right, raised the carbine to his shoulder and fired. His first shot took Billy Matthews in the left shoulder, spinning him around and knocking his pistol from his hand.
Brown veered his horse to the left and fired his Greener from the hip. The 00-buckshot loads tore into Matthews’ chest, ripping it open and blowing his lungs to pieces, catapulting his body into the campfire, where it lay smoldering.
Scurlock rode toward Olinger, who began to fire his rifle as fast as he could lever the shells into the chamber. His second shot hit Scurlock in the side, cutting a shallow groove through his flank.
Scurlock didn’t flinch at the burning in his side but took aim and thumbed back the hammer on his Colt Army .44. He fired once, missing, and then again, thi
s time hitting Wally Olinger in the chest.
Olinger staggered back, but continued to fire until a bullet from Falcon tore through his lower jaw, shattering it and sending teeth and blood flying. Olinger fell to the dirt mortally wounded, to lie moaning and trying to scream for help, but only managing a garbled gurgling through his ruined mouth.
Brown twisted in the saddle and fired his second barrel at a man running toward his horse. The molten lead buckshot hit John Beckwith just below his buttocks, tearing his left leg off at the thigh and shredding his right leg down to the bone. He sprawled, screaming in pain, on his face, to be trampled as Brown’s horse ran right over his writhing body.
Two more men, trying to climb aboard bucking, dancing horses, were cut down by Falcon as he rode past, his .44.40 slugs hitting one mid-center in the back, and the other in the neck.
Scurlock saw John Long—the man who had set fire to McSween’s house—and fired into him as he was trying to jump on a horse and ride away, shooting back over his shoulder with a pistol.
Scurlock gave chase, firing his Colt Army .44 until it was empty. Unable to reload with his mount galloping at full speed, Scurlock rode up next to Long and pulled a Bowie knife out of his belt. As he pulled his horse right up against Long’s, he slashed out backhanded with the razor-sharp blade, cutting a long gash in the side of Long’s neck.
Long grabbed his neck with both hands, blood spurting from between his fingers, and finally fell to the ground, his eyes wide, with foamy blood running from his mouth and nose.
Middleton rode through the middle of the camp, straight at Buck Powell, who was crouched near the string of horses at the edge of the clearing.
Powell fired as fast as he could with both hands at the charging figure riding down on him. One of his bullets hit Middleton in the left shoulder, sending his pistol spinning out of his left hand. He drew another from his belt, thumbed back the hammer, and fired as he rode past Powell.
His shot hit Powell in the left temple, blowing a piece of his skull the size of his fist into the air, snapping Powell’s head back and putting out his lights for good.
Middleton used his right hand to stuff his useless left arm into his belt so it wouldn’t flop around as he rode, and whirled his horse to head back toward the camp.
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