The Sons of Grady Rourke

by Douglas Savage

  They were so confident of a tranquil Sabbath beside the river that they did not look down the narrow road all day—until they heard the sound of a horse pounding hard over the rock-hard ground. They had to shield their eyes with their gloved hands before they could make out Dick Brewer flying toward them. He had the reins in one hand and his other hand tightly gripped his horse’s flowing mane.

  Though above freezing, the mile-high air was still cold and thin enough that Brewer could not speak when he executed a flying dismount, allowing his winded horse to jog without him toward the corral. The rider stood ankle-deep in old snow. He hunched over with his hands braced upon his flexed knees. Dry heaves convulsed his chest as he gasped for air. His nonstop, twenty-five-mile gallop had only been broken by stretches of rough trotting to rest the horse.

  The ranch foreman’s lips were blue and his cheeks were bright red. His ears under his hat brim were menacingly pure white from incipient frostbite.

  Billy Bonney put a hand on Brewer’s twitching back and one on his chest to keep his from crumbling to the ground. Patrick steadied him with hands on both shoulders.

  “Just breathe slow, Dick,” Billy counseled. “You’ll freeze your lungs for sure if you keep panting like some old boiler about to blow.”

  Brewer could only nod and wheeze hard. The commotion brought John Tunstall to the front doorway.

  “Dick? You all right, old man?” Tunstall walked into the brilliant sunshine.

  The young foreman looked up. Tears were streaming freely from his burning eyes. “They’re coming right behind me, Mr. Tunstall.” Brewer’s voice was hoarse, not much beyond a winded whisper. “Brady’s men! Near on fifty of them! Like an army. The Boys is with them, too.”

  “Evans?”

  “The captain and the Boys and another three dozen. Coming for them horses what they says belong to Mr. McSween.”

  Tunstall touched Brewer’s sagging shoulder and Patrick moved his hand out of the way.

  “Now you just get hold of yourself, Dick,” Tunstall smiled and spoke soothingly. “Sheriff Brady won’t put up with any trouble.”

  Brewer straightened his back and took off his hat. His hair was soaking wet and began to steam in the cool air. He wiped his wet face with his furclad arm.

  “Brady ain’t leading them. Deputy Morton is in charge with Billy Mathews. Brady stayed behind.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “Probably this morning,” Brewer stammered. “Could be here after dark or at first light Monday.”

  Tunstall’s face darkened. Brady ate at his enemy’s table. But the Englishman still respected Brady for trying to walk the narrow line between the House and anarchy. Anything would be possible without Brady’s influence so far from home.

  “Very well, Dick. Thank you for coming down here. Now you go on inside by the fire.” Tunstall glanced toward Billy. “Help him inside, please. Patrick? You better bring everyone inside, too.”

  Patrick nodded and headed for the large barn.

  Tunstall stood alone outside. He looked toward the west where the large red sun was close to touching the snow-capped Sacramento Mountains. It would be full darkness in an hour. He turned and walked slowly into his home five thousand miles from his father’s house in London.

  By the time Dick Brewer was breathing normally over a cup of steaming coffee, Patrick led six cowhands into the spacious main room of the ranch house. They wore only light jackets over their heavy shirts and trousers covered with leather chaps. Their labor in and around the barn kept them warm.

  “Boys, Deputy Morton is leading a posse down here to steal the horses.” Tunstall spoke softly in his genteel, English accent that inspired Lincoln’s Anglos and Latinos alike to listen attentively to his face and to chuckle behind his back. “Those horses are rightly mine and not Alex’s. I don’t believe that I can trust Morton with those animals. Men, I want five of you to ride with me to drive the bunch of them up to Lincoln. If we can get them into town before Morton gets his hands on them, at least Sheriff Brady will do right by me, I think.” He paused and looked around the room. Some of his men were looking down at the shiny hardwood floor. Tunstall moved his gaze to the men whose eyes met his own.

  William Bonney took a step forward; then Dick Brewer, whose legs were still stiff and sore. Only one other cowhand took his place beside Bonney. With a shrug, Patrick stepped up beside Brewer. No one else moved.

  “Then this will do, boys. It’ll be dark in an hour. We’ll leave at dawn. Billy, let’s take two pack horses with supplies. Don’t know where we might have to camp. It’ll be slow going with the stock. The rest of you can go on about your business around the ranch.”

  A chorus of subdued voices mumbling “Yes, Mister Tunstall” rose and faded quickly as the nongame hands hurried out into the evening twilight. Tunstall walked to Patrick.

  “This isn’t your fight, Patrick.”

  “I know. There shouldn’t be any if we can leave before Morton and Mathews get down here. Either way, I am on your payroll.”

  “Chisum’s. Not mine.”

  “What’s the difference?” Patrick looked Tunstall in the eye.

  The Englishman thought about it and smiled broadly with a nod. There was no difference.

  “Then let’s get some food on the table for everyone and the five of us can turn in early. We have some hard driving come morning.”

  Without further discussion, Billy Bonney, Patrick, and one of the ranch hands headed for the large kitchen stocked to feed a dozen men all winter. John Tunstall threw his heavy coat over his shoulders before walking outside. He stood alone on the front porch for half an hour. He watched the orange sun drop behind the distant purple mountains to leave a blue-black sky behind. In the still blackness of the Sacramento Mountains silhouetted against crystal stars in a perfect sky, Tunstall thought of London’s smokestacks driving black soot into a wet gray sky. He thought of the endless city’s noise and clatter and violence. The chilly breeze washing his face had started in California and had remained clean for eight hundred miles. The Englishman smiled at his new country.

  THE NOISY SPURS and boots on Tunstall’s porch an hour before daylight belonged to Robert Widenmann who had ridden all night. A full moon illuminated his way. Fortified with black coffee, eggs, and grits at Tunstall’s table, Widenmann stood in the middle of the main room. He played with his well-oiled Peacemaker, twirling it as he imagined Buffalo Bill would do it.

  Armed men were posted at the bottom of the lane where it met the stage road north to Lincoln. The shivering sentries beside a roaring open fire heard only the wind as they strained to hear approaching horsemen.

  By eight o’clock, the Englishman, Bonney, Brewer, Widenmann decked out like a Mexican bandito, Patrick, and one of Tunstall’s regular hands, drove eight horses up the stage road. The horses were all legally Tunstall’s. He had carefully cut out his own animals and left McSween’s few horses behind in the paddock where they never lifted their fuzzy muzzles from piles of rich hay. An hour along the road, the horsemen drove the livestock down an overgrown and little used trail that left the main road. The rugged trail went westward off the north-south wagon road. Hills and switch-backs would hide them from the posse on the main road.

  Two dozen men rode slowly up the lane at ten o’clock. Jimmy Dolan rode with them. Lightly falling snow had already filled the hoof prints of Tunstall’s escape.

  The riders stopped at the front porch and were met by three cowhands who shook their shaggy heads when Dolan demanded Tunstall. The owner of the House was furious, but took comfort from seeing a few animals left behind in the paddock. Those would have to do.

  Dolan ordered Deputy William Morton to take thirteen of the posse’s twenty-four men back up the main road to find Tunstall and arrest him for evasion of a lawful writ of attachment. Dolan and Billy Mathews stayed behind with the rest to round up McSween’s horses.

  Morton turned his horse northward with a dozen men at his flanks including Jesse Evans, hi
s Boys, and Sean Rourke.

  The man with half a face had stayed behind in Lincoln for three hours yesterday morning. Melissa Bryant kept filling his coffee cup each time he said that he had enough. She kept watching him to make certain that he did not take horse. And Sean was content and untroubled. Then little Abigail turned her merry eyes toward him and said sweetly, “Mama and I are glad that you ain’t got the fight in you no more.”

  Sean was in the saddle within fifteen minutes. He rode hard for an hour to catch the posse. For a long day on the road and a cold night under his blanket beside the road, he had tried mightily not to think about Melissa standing in the sunshine and wiping her violet eyes with the filthy sleeve of her blouse.

  The posse followed the main road for a dozen miles under an overcast sky. William Morton reined his mount to a stop and the others stopped. A narrow trail cut left, off the stage road. The trail northward looked fairly untrammeled. But the trail to the west was blemished with frozen brown clods of horse droppings on muddy snow.

  “That way,” Deputy Morton said through the ice clinging to his beard. Thirteen men followed “Buck” Morton into the thickets. For six hours, the tracks of horses freshened ahead of the posse. By four-thirty Monday afternoon, the horse droppings they followed were not yet frozen and patches of snow were yellow.

  The armed men stopped. Morton spoke softly on clouds of steam.

  “Take to them trees, boys.”

  The lawmen led the posse into a stand of trees beside the trail. Utter silence was broken only by the sound of their horses snorting as they put one hoof slowly in front of the other. They climbed a small hill that overlooked the trail below.

  Buck Morton said nothing. He pointed down the tree covered slope at four men riding slowly ahead of maybe half a dozen unsaddled horses. They walked near the frozen Rio Ruidoso.

  Morton stood slightly in his stirrups to survey the little caravan below. He smiled and pulled his Winchester, lever-action rifle from the scabbard on his saddle. With his knees locked and his backside out of the saddle, the deputy drew his bead on Tunstall’s cold forehead. He looked over the rifle toward Jesse Evans.

  The captain nodded.

  Only ten miles from Lincoln, Morton squeezed the trigger. His horse jumped sideways at the report but did not unseat him.

  Before John Tunstall could look up the hill to see what had exploded in the woods, what felt like a strong wind seemed to blow him backwards, out of his saddle.

  Dick Brewer, Rob Widenmann, and the hired man instantly gathered their reins and bolted down the trail, leaving their little herd to scatter and Tunstall to bleed on the snow, alone.

  Half a mile behind Tunstall, Bill Bonney and Patrick Rourke rode hard toward the sound of the shot. They skidded to a stop in the cover of the thickets beside the trail. They watched in silence and did nothing as Jesse Evans led the posse down the hillside toward Tunstall.

  By the time the posse arrived, John Tunstall was dead.

  Jesse Evans dismounted and kicked Tunstall’s lifeless body. Warm blood oozed from the hole above the left eye. Evans smiled up at Buck Morton. Then he knelt on one knee and drew John Tunstall’s revolver from the dead man’s belt. He put one more round for good measure into the corpse’s right shoulder with Tunstall’s own handiron. Standing beside the body, Evans turned and put another round into the face of Tunstall’s horse.

  Evans held Tunstall’s warm weapon shoulder high. He squinted one eye and took aim at a nearby tree. He fired, knelt again, and returned the piece to Tunstall’s bloody hip.

  “He fired three times at us, Deputy. The iron will prove it for sure.”

  Buck Morton gathered his reins.

  “Round up them horses, men, and let’s move on. We’ll all be home by suppertime.”

  Ten men left Morton’s side and collected Tunstall’s horses.

  Sean Rourke hardly moved, except to control his wide-eyed mount for each of the discharges of the weapons. With his mouth open, he drew rein to steady the animal. He had never seen a man gunned down in cold blood. The look he cast Morton and Evans was anguished disbelief. The once wounded soldier felt suddenly like Cain.

  Morton understood.

  “You ride with the House now, Rourke. Let’s drive on.”

  “You ain’t just going to leave him.”

  Sheriff Brady’s man smiled.

  “Wolves got to eat, too.”

  When the lawman spurred his horse into a loping canter, Sean remained fixed beside John Tunstall, dead, and the Englishman’s patient horse, dead.

  When Sean’s nervous horse made a slow turn, the rider surveyed the surrounding woods. He saw no one and heard no one. Beside Billy, Patrick’s wide eyes met his brother’s grim face, but Sean saw only trees heavy with glistening snow.

  Sean kicked his animal’s sides and galloped up the trail toward the posse that had abandoned him. He left Tunstall lying face-up and wide-eyed. A gentle snow fell softly into the body’s open mouth.

  Chapter Eight

  AS BUCK MORTON HAD PROMISED, HIS POSSE WAS HOME FOR supper, Monday evening, February 18th. John Tunstall’s weary horses milled about the corral beside the Wortley Hotel. The possemen who had families took the comfort of their wive’s hot food and the happy unwashed faces of their children.

  Sean Rourke had no home. He sat alone in his darkened room at the hotel. He had led his tired horse on foot past Melissa’s door. He knocked, assured the woman and her child that he was safe, gave no details, and pulled his mount by its bridle to the Wortley’s paddock where the animal visited Tunstall’s confiscated livestock.

  With fresh snow on their shoulders, Billy Bonney, Rob Widenmann, and Patrick Rourke rode slowly into Lincoln at ten o’clock. Thick snow flakes absorbed the sounds of their horses and no one was on the single street to hear them when they turned their animals out in the paddock at Tunstall’s store. Old blind Colonel shuffled over to the three new horses. Deep hollows above Colonel’s lifeless eyes gave away his advanced age. He raised his muzzle and rubbed whiskers with the newcomers. He sniffed the night air for his master who had saved him from being sold as a side of beef at the Indian Agency store. Disappointed, Colonel stumbled to a solitary corner of the corral where he waited alone.

  The deputies whom Sheriff Brady had assigned to seize Tunstall’s store had long since gone to their own homes and families. Only one guest at the Wortley saw the lantern light in Tunstall’s window when Billy built a fire in the pot-bellied stove. Sean Rourke saw the light cool and yellow on the snow under the window in the adobe wall. Then he pulled the curtain across the hotel window and returned to his chair in the dark.

  By the time the lawmen returned to Tunstall’s store Tuesday morning, the place was empty. Billy and Patrick left before daybreak to return to the trail.

  Townsfolk already buzzed with rumors of the Englishman’s death on the road to Lincoln. He had fired on the posse, they said, and he got what was coming to him.

  The rumors stopped briefly when a buckboard appeared on the dirt road leading to Fort Stanton. The wagon drew gasps when it stopped at Tunstall’s store where three burly deputies stood guard.

  Dr. Taylor Ealy, twenty-nine, helped his dazzlingly beautiful wife, Mary, out of the wagon. The woman held the hand of her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Their four-month-old baby nestled in her physician father’s arms. Sheriff William Brady met the Ealys on the frozen street.

  “Attorney McSween sent for us, Sheriff. I’m a doctor and a Presbyterian minister. We’re here to start a church.” The University of Pennsylvania graduate introduced his family to the law of Lincoln County.

  “McSween and Tunstall ain’t here, Dr. Ealy. McSween should be back any day now. I’m afraid that Mr. Tunstall done got himself shot out in the country. He was evading lawful process. Guess them Britishers don’t know any better.”

  The newest family in town was ushered inside the store and the sheriff showed them to quarters in the back.

  BILLY AND PATRICK rode slowly t
hrough the snow-covered trees. All of the hoof prints from yesterday were erased. Riding in a wagon, they made slow progress. They did not find Tunstall’s frozen body until midday. Climbing down, they heaved Tunstall into the back like a heavy log, The body had turned to stone overnight.

  The funeral cortege of one decrepit wagon drawn by one sway-backed horse did not arrive in Lincoln until after dark. Unhitching the animal, they left the body outside to stay fresh.

  Wednesday, Justice of the Peace John B. Wilson ordered an inquest into Tunstall’s death and the two bullet holes in the body. Taylor Ealy’s first official duty on his second day at his new home was to conduct an autopsy of the frozen body. The post surgeon rode over from the fort to assist after the body spent the day thawing.

  The official cause of Tunstall’s death was a gunshot wound to the face. His sidearm chambered three empty cartridges, proving William Morton’s report that Tunstall had opened fire on the duly appointed posse.

  The Reverend Dr. Ealy’s second official function was to bury John Tunstall on Thursday, February 22nd.

  Five men with picks hammered all night at the frozen ground between the back of Tunstall’s store and the glasslike Rio Bonito.

  “Deep as we’re going to get till spring, boys,” one of the broad shouldered ranchers said as he wiped perspiration from his face.

  “Ain’t deep enough,” another sweating man protested.

  “Tunstall ain’t about to complain,” the first man said firmly.

  “Guess not.”

  Lincoln’s womenfolk wore their best black bonnets under the blue, afternoon sky. Their men stood uneasily in the cool sunshine. Open palms rested on walnut grips of Colts, Remingtons, and Starrs where long coats were pulled back to reveal leather. The killing posse, Sheriff Brady, and Jimmy Dolan stood off to one side. Sean Rourke stood with the House with Melissa leaning against him. Never before had they touched in public. Families who did business with Tunstall and McSween stood closer to the excavation behind the store. Patrick stood with these partisans, between Billy Bonney and Rob Widenmann. Dick Brewer slouched behind Billy. A tense peace prevailed under the narrow-eyed gaze of Company H of the blue-shirted 15th United States Infantry. Dolan had called out the troops from Fort Stanton during the night. The black faces of the cold soldiers matched the bonnets of the women.