by Ron Hansen
On January 18, with a faith in the justice system that was without foundation, John H. Tunstall foolishly wrote a letter to the editor of the Mesilla Valley Independent indignantly charging Sheriff Brady and Jimmy Dolan with embezzling fifteen hundred dollars in taxes paid by Alexander McSween and meant for the commonwealth.
So it was that the Englishman John H. Tunstall and the Canadian Alexander A. McSween became the villains the Irish merchants in Lincoln could blame for everything that had gone sour.
And now the Kid stirred sugar into his hot coffee as he watched through a plate-glass window that warped them Jimmy Dolan and L. G. Murphy crossing Lincoln’s only street to the Tunstall store, Murphy flinging a hand grandly and hollering sentences that were consumed by a hungry wind, and Jimmy crutching his staggering boss, a Winchester rifle cradled in his left arm.
McSween was watching, too. He took off his caped Inverness topcoat and then his citified top hat. His kinky brown hair was stacked as high as a chocolate cake. “Escort Jimmy into my office,” he said and headed to the back of the store with his hat on the garment folded over his right arm. The Kid noticed that he carried no gun, a nonesuch in that era.
Dolan and Murphy let in the weather, then loudly shut the door. Cold eddied off their greatcoats.
Without emotion, Dick Brewer flatly said, “Well, this is awkward.”
Dolan flew his glare around the store, despising whatever he lit on. “Where’s Alex?”
“Yonder,” Waite said and shot his right thumb backward over his shoulder. “But just you.”
“Sure fine,” Dolan said and marched to the lawyer’s office, his Wellingtons clobbering the hardwood floor.
“And the Englishman not here either?” Murphy asked. His Irish accent made it “Anglish” and “I-ther.”
“At the Jinglebob Ranch with John Chisum,” said Waite.
“Well, more’s the pity,” L.G. said, falling back onto a Chippendale side chair by the stove and clomping the heels of his boots out wide. His head lolled until he fixed on the Kid, and he asked in his Irish accent, “Who might ye be, then?”
“William H. Bonney. They call me Kid.”
“Workin for Tunstall?”
“Yep.”
“And your age is all of what, fourteen?”
“Eighteen.”
“Boot ye ain’t even shavin yet!” Murphy grinned at Waite, who did not grin back. “The lad looks sweet as Baby Jesus in velvet pants!”
“Old enough to do damage,” Waite said.
Murphy measured the Kid and frowned. “How’d a handsome fella like you fall in with this unholy bunch?”
The Kid smiled. “ ‘To dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed.’ ”
With a harrumph Murphy said, “Quotin scripture to me, he is.” He took a bottle of Double Anchor whiskey from his overcoat pocket, screwed out the cork with his side teeth, and took a swallow.
Even passersby on the street could hear McSween shouting with exasperation that the Merchants Life Assurance Co. was in receivership and with his travel to New York to argue the case the residue of the Emil Fritz estate wouldn’t even cover his fees.
“Aye right!” Jimmy yelled. “Away on that!”
“Look at the paperwork if you disbelieve me,” said McSween.
Murphy ignored the office wrangling as he recited the placarded prices he saw. “Sellin a poond a butter for fifty cent. Doozen eggs, fifty cent. Even beef on the hoof, eight cent the poond. Headin for doom the Brit is at them prices.” He fiercely gazed at Waite and Brewer. “We han’t sold nary a thing in six weeks,” he said, then his face changed and he hurriedly sought out the spittoon by his chair to vomit orangely into it.
The onlookers grimaced and fended the odor from their noses, but the Kid joked by asking the store, “Who else besides me is feeling hungry?”
Wiping his mouth on his overcoat sleeve, Murphy swished with whiskey, bulging his cheeks, and he swallowed as his gaze again lit on the Kid. “So, you’re the joker in the deck.”
“And I hear you’re Lord of the Mountain.”
“Ye heared right.” And then he smiled as he limericked, “I have conquered the aging disease, that has brought lesser sorts to their knees. I’m a strapping old man and I’ve proved that I can blow out candles with only one wheeze.”
“Could I jot that down for a hundert years from now?” asked the Kid.
Murphy just stared for a while. “So, ye a hired hand or hired gun?”
“Whatever needs doing.”
He lifted his Double Anchor in salute and said, “Good on ye, sham.”
Still haranguing his rival on future litigation, Dolan threatened, “We have friends in high places, you know.”
And they overheard McSween saying, “You’ll recall I have encountered the partisan Judge Bristol and our miscreant district attorney.”
The famous sot in the front room sighed and called to the office, “Oh, go on with the talk, you!” And to the others he said, “Talk don’t cost nothin but air, a scrape of the hind leg, and a jupe of the head. Riches is in the doing.” And then he craned his neck to see the door. “Where’s Brady finally?”
“Up to no good, prob’ly,” Dick Brewer said.
Murphy smiled. “Well, that’s the point, int it?”
And just then the sheriff barged in. He was a wide man with little slanted-down-at-the-corners green eyes, close to Murphy in age with a like Irish heritage, and the father of eight half Mexicans with one more on the way. His full, toast-brown mustache curtained his mouth, and there was a dapper paintbrush of beard affixed to the center of his chin. A tin badge of office was pinned to his navy blue overcoat lapel.
Murphy smiled. “How’s the big size of ye, Bill?”
“Bang on, L.G.,” said Brady. Seeming to look among the glaring faces for someone to properly address, he gave up and lifted a page overhead, the formal handwriting on it in the loopy Spencerian style. Crying out unnecessarily, he proclaimed, “I have a writ of attachment signed by Judge Warren Bristol on this store in its full entirety, exacted by the sister of Emil Fritz, deceased, and pursuant to a civil action against Alexander A. McSween, Esquire, the Englishman being in league with him.”
Hearing his name called out, McSween emerged from his office and frowned in disdain. “Oh, this has gone far enough.”
Jimmy Dolan instructed the sheriff, “And you’ll inventory Alex’s house next?”
“Uh-huh,” Brady said.
“And Tunstall’s livestock?”
“Oh, I expect.”
Alexander McSween told the sheriff, “I have established no partnership with Mr. Tunstall. I merely lease an office from him. Any seizure of his property is plainly unwarranted.”
The sheriff said, “You’re in cahoots, Alex. You testified as such in Judge Bristol’s court.”
“I said no such thing!”
“Well, it got written down.”
Two sheriff’s deputies galumphed into the store and lodged themselves by the front door and cashier’s till with shotguns at parade rest. “What stinks in here?” one asked.
With a loony wave, L. G. Murphy identified himself as the odor’s source.
McSween was still recalling the hearing. “Are you altering testimony now? Is there no end to your prevarications?”
The onlookers worried over the word. Their educations failed them.
“You Irish . . . ,” the Canadian said.
His hands inching up his slung Winchester, Jimmy Dolan said, “Be wide there, Alex, or I’ll claim ye.”
With contempt, McSween faced him. “You all reek of corruption.”
Little Jimmy juggled the decision on whether to shoot the lawyer as he looked to the sheriff for instruction, but Sheriff Brady was in hushed discussion with Deputy George Hindman, whose face was ravaged into ugliness by the chew of a crazed black bear.
The Kid and Waite gently went to their guns, but just rested their palms on the grips when Brewer shook his head against any violence.
> And then John H. Tunstall walked in, a flurry of falling snow in his wake.
“We thought you was at the Jinglebob!” Murphy said gaily.
“Alas, I found out John Chisum is still jailed in Las Vegas.” He took off his felt hat and swatted flakes off it as he scanned all the faces. “We seem to be rather populated here.”
The sheriff said, “I have a writ of attachment against your inventory signed by Judge Warren Bristol.”
The Englishman was unsurprised. “Oh, what a nuisance!”
“And a fret, too, Mr. Tunstall,” said Dolan, his hands so tightening on his rifle that his knuckles whitened. “Would ye like to forget the legalities and settle our differences here and now?”
The Kid’s hand gripped his Colt’s pistol butt and he readied for a gunfight as he sought a go-ahead from Brewer, then Waite, but they were ignoring the Kid’s urgency. Just last May, Jimmy Dolan had killed a Mexican stable hand for the House, claiming Hiraldo Jaramillo had gone after him with a knife, but Waite and Brewer knew Dolan’s fiery excitements often cooled with delay.
The Englishman may have known that, too, for he held up his hands and sought to pacify the twenty-nine-year-old by saying, “I’m not a combative man, Mr. Dolan. I don’t earn my income that way. Besides, I have ridden over two hundred miles for naught. I have much energy to recruit.”
L. G. Murphy was leaning forward like a theatergoer held in suspense and prepared to be entertained by whatever the outcome.
“So, you’re a coward then,” said Dolan.
“Have it your way.”
“A quare fella.”
“I shan’t draw a gun, no matter the insults.”
And then Dick Brewer interfered by calmly walking between the two, saying, “We’ll just get our supplies and go.”
“Won’t be no sales today!” Jimmy Dolan cried out, but he lowered his Winchester. “We need to do an audit. Right, Sheriff?”
“Required by the writ of attachment,” Brady said.
“There’s nothing to be gained, hanging out here,” Waite said and headed outside, his spurs jangling. The Kid and Tunstall and finally Brewer followed.
Murphy lifted his quart of Double Anchor and called out in farewell, “Leprechauns, castles, good luck, and laughter! Lullabies, dreams, and love ever after!”
And Dolan ran to the front door to shout after them, “I’ll get ye yet, Englishman! And take heed of this: When ye write the Independent again, say I’m with the Boys!”
The Kid’s hand went to his gun as he turned to face Jimmy Dolan, but Tunstall halted him and calmly said, “It’s just a kerfuffle, Billy. We’ll sort things out.”
- 8 -
AFFRAY ON THE HAM MILLS TRAIL
Walking through the McSween residence with their house servant, a former slave who’d taken the name George Washington, Sheriff Brady noted things like “one parlor organ,” “a lot of sheet music,” “one wash bowl & pitcher,” “one sewing machine.” In Alex’s office he’d counted “550 law books.” Washington was outraged as he watched the sheriff hold up and inspect Mrs. Susan McSween’s intimate things in a chiffonier’s drawer, and he reported the violation to his employer. In retaliation, Alexander McSween wrote a letter on February 11 to Carl Schurz, the secretary of the interior, accusing the new Jas. J. Dolan & Co. and the federal agent to the Mescalero Apaches of conniving to furnish unhealthy stolen cattle and flour of foul mashed wheat and corn to the Indians of the reservation. “I suggest that you send a Detective here who will ferret this matter,” wrote McSween. “A thorough search will disclose fearful villainy on the part of all concerned.”
In a postscript he nominated “Robt. A. Widenmann of this place” to be the next Indian agent, not just because Widenmann was a friend of himself and John Tunstall but because Widenmann’s father was an immigrant from Württemberg, Germany, just as Carl Schurz had been. He harbored the hope that they maybe knew each other.
Jimmy Dolan was the postmaster of Lincoln village, so Alex McSween took his letter nine miles southwest to Fort Stanton for mailing.
Meanwhile, Colonel William L. Rynerson, the presiding attorney for the Third Judicial District, was writing Jimmy Dolan, “It must be made too hot for Tunstall and his friends, the hotter the better, shake that outfit up till it shells out and squares up and then shake it out of Lincoln. Get the people with you, have good men about to aid Sheriff Brady, and be assured I will aid you all I can.”
The next week was filled with threats and caterwauling and whose-was-which jockeying over horses and cattle, but the upshot was that gun portholes were drilled in John Tunstall’s Los Feliz shack, the front patio and entrance were fortified like a stockade with heaps of sand-filled gunnysacks, and Gottfried Gauss, a Santa Claus of an old chuck wagon cook, took up habitation inside to oversee the cattle and property. And on the cold morning of February 18, 1878, with the instruction that Tunstall would “countenance no violence,” a cavalcade left the Los Feliz ranch for the Lincoln plaza with six horses and two mules released from attachment by Sheriff Brady and which Tunstall intended to corral behind his merchandise store.
Fred Waite handled a buckboard to stock up on groceries in the village, and when the shortcut along the hilly Ham Mills trail got too rutted for apt-to-crack wooden spokes, Waite veered off toward the flatlands of the Wagon trail. Continuing on with Tunstall on horseback were just Dick Brewer, Robert Widenmann, William H. Bonney, and John Middleton, a heavyset horse thief of twenty-four who was wanted for killing a man in Texas.
Kid Bonney trotted a gray and spotted Appaloosa horse that was on loan to him and got up alongside Tunstall and his handsome but blind bay thoroughbred, Colonel. Looking to Billy, the Englishman said, “A splendid equine, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Without question,” Billy said.
“I have taught Colonel to high-step when the road gets choppy so his fetlocks aren’t injured. And he’ll prepare for changes of grade, up or down, just with my cautioning. Without any urging, he can walk twenty-five miles in five hours and a half. And he comes when I call him and follows me around as if he could see.”
“Wish envy was a more honorable emotion.”
Tunstall smiled. “I do hope I get to know you better, Kid Bonney. You have a certain élan, a je ne sais quoi that I find delightful.”
“Well, I recognize that last word. Thank you.”
Watching his forward cowhands rock in their saddles, Tunstall fondly said, “I feel the same way about Dick Brewer and Rob Widenmann. Rob takes as much care of me when I’m ill as if I were a fainting dowager. I get impatient with his coddling and once fetched my bulldog to snarl him away, but for generosity, courage, and the general manly virtues, Rob is truly a cracking good fellow.”
“Wasn’t aware you were sick,” the Kid said.
“Oh, it’s just rheumatism and too little sleep. Actually, I’m still very much below par, but I imagine I shall find my pins again by the time the buffalo grass greens up. In the meantime I have so many plans. Shall I tell you?”
His face gleamed with such childish exultation and fanciful sparkle that it felt a little like flirting. “Sure, Harry. Tell,” the Kid said.
“Well, betwixt you and me, there is a ranch adjoining mine that I want very badly. It could be got for only six hundred pounds and I believe I could reap over three hundred per annum. I am more convinced every day that land here is as fine an investment as one of my father’s merchant ships.”
“Like to get myself some cattle property one day. Fred Waite and I have a notion to partner on a ranch soon’s we get some cash.”
“Oh do it, Kid. Put down roots. I’ll help you.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
His employer’s stare then went to the horizon as he ruminated in silence. The Kid could hear the shrill cowboy whistles far ahead as Widenmann and Brewer collected the troop of delinquent horses and mules whenever they threatened to wander. The frozen fescue grass crackled under the hooves of the Kid’s horse. His Colorado saddle
and doghouse stirrups creaked whenever he shifted his weight. Off in the distance there were galleons of shock-white cumulus clouds gathering in the wide sky’s cerulean harbor, and their azure shadows floated over the flatlands. Billy surprised himself by saying, “I love it here. I’ll never leave.”
And Harry smiled. “Nor shall I.”
* * *
Even at fifty-five, the white-bearded German, Gottfried Gauss, seemed too old and fat and harmless to harass, which is why John Tunstall had him stay behind at his hovel of a ranch house. And Gauss was squatting to tend a Dutch oven on a hissing fire outside when he heard the far-off racket of thirty horses and riders galloping toward the Los Feliz and stood with his hands on his aproned hips. Although he was so nearsighted that he often failed to make out faces less than five yards away, the cook recognized some of the gang called the Boys, but there were so many others with whom he wasn’t familiar, their horses panting, neighing, shaking their manes, and bumping as the jammed intruders sought and lost ground with each other. And then Jimmy Dolan rode up and loomed over the cook from his fourteen-hand pinto, his face scarlet with windburn and fury. “We’re a posse duly authorized by Sheriff Brady,” he said. “Where’s your boss?”
“A-vay,” Gauss said and flung a hand northward. “Lincoln.”
“He just left?”
“A-vile ago.”
“Who all’s with him in the beyont?”
“His hired hands.”
“I needs a number.”
Gauss counted no more than one right hand of fingers and said, “Five.”
Jimmy told Jesse Evans, “We don’t all need to go, then.” And so he called out names: Jesse Evans, Frank Baker, and Tom Hill of the Boys. Deputy George Hindman of Lincoln. And Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts, Robert Beckwith, John Wallace Olinger, and William S. “Buck” Morton of the just plain ornery.
Gottfried Gauss would later testify that he heard Buck Morton cry out, “Hurry up, boys. My knife is sharp and I feel like a scalping.” And then Dolan and his handpicked men vigorously raced toward the Ham Mills trail while those now with nothing to do shoed and curried their horses or partook of the old cook’s food.