The Brothers O'Brien

by J. A. Johnstone

  The word had come out unbidden, and the wonder of it was that neither Ironside nor Samuel thought it amiss.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dromore, Fall 1885

  The circle of the years rolled on at Dromore as the O’Brien brothers grew to manhood. Despite blizzards, years of drought, and the depredations of the Apache, the ranch continued to prosper. By 1885, Shamus O’Brien had shipped sixty thousand cattle north to feed the burgeoning cities and very few of them were longhorns. The backbone of his cattle operation was a dozen vaqueros up from the Mexican border who worked for him full-time, half of them settled on Dromore land with their families. Fifty seasonal cowboys were hired every spring.

  Saraid had been ailing for years, but had managed to educate her sons and turn Jacob into an accomplished pianist. She worried constantly about her youngest son. The strange darkness hidden deep in the Celtic soul had manifested itself in him. He was a startling contrast to his brothers, physically and mentally. Whereas Samuel, Pat, and Shawn were blond and blue eyed, Jacob was black of hair and eyes, a throwback to the ancient people of Ireland who were there before the arrival of the fair Celts.

  Samuel was twenty-four, a serious, driven man who took over more and more of the day-to-day operations of the ranch as his father aged. The old injury caused by the Apache had finally taken its toll. Shamus could no longer walk far, and used a wheelchair most of the time. But Samuel smiled often, something Jacob rarely did.

  Shawn was handsome, happy-go-lucky, with a fine singing voice and an eye for the ladies, who adored him in turn. He was fast with a gun, and displayed his shooting prowess often, something that irritated Jacob, who was even faster and more accurate, but never revealed it to anyone.

  Patrick, bookish and bespectacled, was also an easygoing man. With a love of literature, he worshipped at the altar of Sir Walter Scott, but claimed Mr. Dickens knew more about the human condition than anyone else on earth.

  All four brothers were top hands and had earned the respect of the vaqueros, an honor they did not bestow easily or often. But they were always wary of Jacob, their laughing, carefree Hispanic nature at odds with a man of black moods and deep depressions, capable of explosive rages and brooding silences.

  Settlements had grown up between Dromore and Santa Fe and other ranchers had moved into the area. For a while, people had come from miles around to hear Jacob play Chopin, but the young man’s hair-trigger temper and the threat of the violence that seethed just under the surface of his nature soon drove them all away.

  Saraid, her dazzling beauty destroyed by the cancer that consumed her, refused to confine herself to her bedroom. She lay on a couch in the living room where she could see her pink hearth, now supporting an ornate marble mantel and fireplace where a huge log burned.

  “Is he gone again, Shamus?” Saraid asked.

  Her husband nodded. “He rode out just before sunup.”

  “Where does he go?”

  O’Brien smiled. “Wherever the trail goes, I guess. Jacob is like a ship. He sets sail and the wind blows him this way and that.”

  “I worry about him, Shamus. I worry about him constantly.”

  “Yes, we all do.”

  O’Brien rolled his wheelchair closer to the bed. “I have good news, mavourneen.”

  Saraid smiled. “And I can see that you’re impatient to tell me.”

  “This morning I made Samuel the new master of Dromore.”

  “And his brothers?”

  “They’ll each have a share, though Jacob told me to give his portion to the others. He wants no part of the life his brothers have chosen.”

  Saraid thought for a while. In a tired voice, she asked, “And what of you, Shamus?”

  “You mean what of us?”

  “Yes, what of us?”

  “This is our home and here we will stay.” He held his wife’s hand. “I’m an old man, Saraid, but I can still give advice.”

  She laughed, and for a fleeting moment she looked like the girl she’d been when they first came to the valley. “You’re forty-three, Shamus, hardly an old man.”

  “Well, I can’t ride and I can barely walk. Are those not the traits of an old man?”

  Saraid shook her head. “Shamus, you’ll never be old.” She pointed. “Go over there and stand on the hearthstone.”

  “I’ll do it, if I can.”

  “You can, Shamus.”

  O’Brien rolled over to the fireplace and struggled out of his chair, the old Apache lance head slowing his movements.

  He stood on the hearth, facing his wife. “Well?”

  “Get your pipe from the mantle and hold it.”

  “’Tis strange things you’re asking me to do, Saraid,” he said, smiling.

  He got his pipe and stood wide-legged on the hearthstone, a gray-haired, stocky man, with eyes that were still a piercing blue.

  Saraid smiled. “Yes, that is how I will always remember you. Shamus, you are still the squire of Dromore and all the land around.”

  Saraid died a month later, just as the first snow of winter drifted past the windows of Dromore.

  As fate would have it, Jacob returned to the ranch on the day of his mother’s funeral. He stood by her grave at the base of the mesa, his head bowed in the falling snow. But he shed no tears, though his grief was immense.

  He’d always been his ma’s favorite and he’d bonded with her, as he had with no other person. His love for his mother went deep. Her death devastated him, plunging him into a depression as black as night.

  He stood next to Lorena at the graveside. Pregnant, she swayed and almost fainted. He put his arm around her and held her, though he did not utter a word of comfort.

  People had come long distances for the funeral. The women were dressed in unrelieved black; the menfolk wore mourning garments over their clothes, as was the custom of the time.

  The vaqueros and their wives and children kneeled in prayer on the icy ground, whispering to each other that Saraid had died a Santisima Muerte, a Most Holy Death.

  As the coffin was lowered into the ground, in his fine tenor voice, Shawn sang “Abide with Me” and his mother’s favorite Irish hymn, the old folk song “Be Thou My Vision.”

  Luther Ironside, snow flecking his mustache and beard, stood like a graven statue, a hard-living man who did not know how to give expression to the grief that tore at him.

  At the wake, Jacob drank little, spoke less, and was relieved to quit the crowded living room when his father called him into his study. He pushed his pa’s wheelchair beside the fire, and sank into the leather chair opposite.

  The death of Saraid had worn on Shamus and he looked years older. His movements were slow and two kinds of pain showed in his eyes, the pain of Saraid’s passing and the constant agony of the Apache lance head.

  Jacob rose, stepped to the drinks cabinet and poured brandy into two crystal glasses. He passed one to his father and sat again. He raised his glass. “To my mother, the kindest, most wonderful woman who ever lived.”

  “Amen,” Shamus said, drinking, hiding the tears in his eyes with the rim of his glass.

  Jacob had became a man that winter, a tall, muscular man with the dusky face of an Indian. Craggy black brows overhung his dark eyes, and under his great beak of a nose grew a thick dragoon mustache, his only vanity. Even dressed in broadcloth, he looked out of place amid the fussy Victorian splendor of his father’s study. Restless, fierce, lonely, he was a man more suited to the wild mountains or perhaps life on a trading schooner, sailing halfway around the world to far countries.

  Shamus, who had spent his life among strong and violent men, recognized that, young as he was, his son was a man to be reckoned with.

  “Your mother asked for you before she died,” Shamus said.

  “Yes, Samuel told me so,” Jacob said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “So was your mother,” Shamus said.

  Jacob made no answer, for he was not a man for excuses. He lit a cigar and waited
for his father to speak again.

  “Where were you, Jacob?”

  “South of here, seeing places I’d never seen before. I go wherever my will takes me.”

  “You go to places where no one is glad at your coming or sad at your leaving. Unless, that is, you consort with whores.”

  “Unlike Shawn or Patrick, I don’t have the face for any other kind of woman.”

  “You should be like Samuel. He has never been attracted to loose women and now he has a fine wife, who’s already bearing him a son.”

  Jacob nodded. “Sam is like Ma’s hearthstone. You’ve built this ranch around him.” He smiled. “He’s the rock of Dromore.”

  “I want you to stay, Jacob,” Shamus said. “A share of Dromore is yours.”

  “I don’t want it, Colonel. I’m man grown and I go my own way.”

  “How will you live?”

  “I’ll get by. My needs are few.”

  Shamus held out his glass, and Jacob rose. He refilled it, and his.

  Talking to his son’s back, Shamus said, “I was speaking to John Moore, the Santa Fe lawyer. He says you could go east to the big cities and become a concert pianist.”

  Jacob handed his father’s glass to him. “I play for my own enjoyment, Pa. Besides, I’d go crazy in a city.”

  “You’ll go crazy anyway if you continue to drift aimlessly like a rudderless ship.”

  Jacob again retreated into silence.

  To the Colonel, life and all it represented was Dromore. But the ranch stifled Jacob O’Brien, and even as he sat in his father’s study, the portrait of Robert E. Lee above the mantel staring down at him with faint disapproval, he felt the walls closing in on him.

  Shamus sighed, a long, drawn-out exhalation that signaled pain and resignation. “We should get back to the others. Saraid would expect it of us.”

  Jacob rose to his feet and put his hands on the back of his father’s wheelchair.

  “No,” Shamus said, his hands on the rubber-rimmed wheels. “Open the door for me, the rest I’ll do for myself.”

  Jacob felt like a puncher who’d just been fired before the spring roundup was over. An hour later, after saying good-bye to no one, he saddled his horse and rode away from Dromore.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dromore, Spring 1886

  “There’s three of them, Colonel, that I saw anyway,” Luther Ironside said.

  “Any sign of Nellie?”

  “No sir, unless she was in the cabin.”

  “What about the surrey and the Morgan?”

  Ironside shook his head.

  Shamus O’Brien sat in his wheelchair on his porch in the morning light, and his eyes ranged over Ironside’s exhausted vaqueros. They’d been searching for Nellie for five days and were totally used up.

  “I claim the open range up by Lone Mountain, Luther,” he said. “You figure those three are nesters?”

  Ironside shook his gray head. “They didn’t look like nesters to me, more like outlaws or rustlers. Those boys wore guns like they were born to them.”

  “You were right not to tackle them by yourself, Luther,” Samuel O’Brien said.

  “Well, boss, the hands were scattered, searching all over, and I reckon I could’ve rounded up a few, but they’re worn out. They set store by Nellie, and none of them has slept in days.”

  “For sure they don’t look in any shape for a gunfight, if it came to that,” Samuel said.

  Ironside was covered in dust, and his face was drawn tight with exhaustion.

  “Luther, dismiss the men and get some rest,” O’Brien said.

  “What about Nellie, Colonel?” Ironside said.

  “Nellie is part of Dromore and Saraid loved her like a sister. If she’s in the cabin, I’ll get her.”

  “A few hours’ sleep and we’ll be ready to ride, Colonel,” Ironside said.

  “Yes, sleep for a while and we’ll talk about this again.”

  After Ironside and his vaqueros left, Samuel said, “I sure hate to lose that amount of time. If the three men Luther saw kidnapped Nellie, they could move on and take her with them.”

  “We won’t lose time, Samuel. You, Patrick, and Shawn are going after her.” O’Brien rolled his chair closer to his son. “When they stole Nellie, they stole from Dromore, and I won’t let that go unpunished.”

  “Pa, Patrick and Shawn are pretty well used up themselves. They scouted all the way to Camaleon Draw and didn’t get in until well after midnight.”

  “They are my sons. They will be ready to ride. Now go rouse them and tell them to arm themselves.”

  Samuel stepped toward the door into the house, but his father’s voice stopped him. “Samuel, if those three men took Nellie and have harmed her in any way, I don’t want them brought back to Dromore alive.”

  Samuel heard and nodded, his face stiff. He walked into the house to wake his brothers.

  Shamus remained on the porch, drinking the strong coffee his black butler had brought him. To the east the sun had just cleared the El Barro Peaks and its light lay on top of the silent mesa like a blessing. The sky was barred with bands of purple, scarlet, and jade, and he smelled pine in the cool air. Some of his Herefords were drinking at the creek, ripples of water circling out from their soft muzzles.

  His butler returned with a thick sandwich of sourdough bread and sizzling bacon, cut in neat triangles, carefully arranged on a china plate. He made to lay a napkin on O’Brien’s lap, but the colonel waved him away.

  “Colonel, you must eat. As it is, you barely eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

  “I’ll eat when Nellie is back at Dromore,” O’Brien said.

  “But, Colonel—”

  “Go away, John, and stop fussing.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “Damn ye for a pest, John,” O’Brien said. “Leave the bloody sandwich on the table beside me and I’ll eat it later.”

  “Make sure you do, Colonel. I’ll be back to check on you.”

  “I’ll eat it. Now scat.”

  O’Brien glared at the man as he left, then worried some more about Nellie. She’d taken Saraid’s death hard, but had continued to rule the household staff of Dromore with a rod of iron. Nellie had also gained a reputation as a midwife, and was on her way back from delivering a baby at a ranch near Big Draw when she disappeared.

  O’Brien felt a spike of anger. If Nellie had indeed been kidnapped, it was a direct attack on Dromore and an affront to himself. In the past he’d hanged men for less.

  Patrick and Shawn led their horses to the front of the house, their faces puffy from lack of sleep. Shawn, who always slept late, was in a sour mood, forced to postpone a trip to Santa Fe where he was sparking a brewer’s pretty daughter. Samuel followed with his own horse.

  “Bring Nellie back, boys,” Shamus O’Brien said.

  “Dromore is not the same without her.”

  The O’Brien brothers were mounted and ready to leave when a Mexican boy astride a skinny, mouse-colored mustang rode up to the house and slid off the pony’s bare back.

  Looking up at the three riders, he said, “Tengo un mensaje para el Señor O’Brien.”

  “Give it here, boy,” Samuel said.

  The boy withdrew a note from inside his shirt and handed it to Samuel. He read it, and wordlessly passed the note to Patrick.

  “Hell, what does it say?” Shamus said.

  Patrick kneed his horse closer to the porch and handed the note to his father. “Read it for yourself, Pa.”

  Shamus took a pair of round glasses from his vest pocket and laid them on his nose. His face turned black with rage as he read the scrawled words.

  “What’s it about, Pa?” Shawn said, temporarily forgetting the brewer’s daughter.

  Shamus’s face was like thunder. “It says, ‘Bring thirty thousand dollars or the woman dies.’”

  “Do you speak any English, boy?” Shawn asked.

  “Some. But I don’t like to.”

  “You’re
a damned little bandito.” Shawn tossed the boy a silver dollar, which he deftly caught. “Now do you speak English?”

  “Yes, I remember,” the boy said.

  “When did you get this?”

  “A man came to my parents’ farm last night and said to take this message to the Dromore ranch. I told him I knew the way and he gave me a dollar.”

  “You’ll get rich one day, kid,” Shawn said. “Where did the man say we should take the money?”

  “He has a cabin near Lone Mountain. I can show you the way for a dollar, no, two dollars.”

  Shawn looked at his father. “What do you say, Pa?”

  Beside himself with anger, Shamus yelled, “John! Come here, damn your eyes!”

  The butler hurried onto the porch.

  Shamus, his anger making him louder still, roared, “Get a carpetbag and fill it with newspaper or whatever else you can find. Bring it here.”

  The butler hesitated, his face puzzled.

  Shamus roared, “Now, damn it!”

  After John scurried away, Shamus said, “Samuel, saddle the buckskin. I’m going with you.”

  “Pa, you can’t ride.” Samuel was horrified.

  “Then you’ll rope me to the horse.”

  Samuel sat his saddle, staring numbly at his father.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Shamus cried out, “does no one at Dromore obey me any longer?”

  Like a man waking from sleep, Samuel said, “I’ll get the horse, Colonel.”

  “Smartly now,” Shamus called after him. “By God, Dromore is at war.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shamus O’Brien, roped to his saddle, led the way northwest across the rolling country under a high, scorching sun. Ahead of him rode the Mexican boy, who occasionally turned and pointed the way to Lone Mountain, a place the O’Briens already knew.

  The peak was surrounded by hill country covered with piñon, wild oak, and juniper. Ponderosa pine and aspen grew on the taller ridges. Here and there Dromore cattle grazed in shaggy meadows, often joined by small herds of antelope.

  The land around Shamus was glorious, but he had little eye for its wild beauty, nor did he heed the heady scent of the spring wildflowers.