The Sons of Grady Rourke

by Douglas Savage

Patrick and Cyrus watched Melissa putter about the tiny kitchen and pantry. Both men noticed her rosy face and the slightest bulge at her waist. They glanced at each other until she turned around with a tray of biscuits and hot gravy. The silent woman set the platter down and bent low near the hearth for the coffee pot. The two men waited for her to sit and serve herself before they reached for the plate. All three turned around with their mouths full when the doorway opened to a clear and bright Saturday morning. With gravy trickling down his chin, Patrick stood with his mouth open when Liam entered. He walked slowly. His feet never completely left the floor as he approached the table. Liam was nearly bald.

  “Jesus Christ, boy,” Cyrus shouted. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  Liam stood emaciated and trembling slightly. His scraggly beard ended at his ears. Where his shoulder-length hair had been, raw stripes criss-crossed his scalp like a bloody field newly plowed. The top of his head was brightly white above his tanned and wind-burned face. Faint trickles of blood erupted from his dry shave by a hunting knife sharpened on an oiled stone.

  “My God, Liam,” Patrick whispered. “What in the name of Heaven?”

  Liam pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. Melissa’s blue eyes were wide. But her beautiful face showed no terror. That corner of her mind that had been brutalized eight years earlier instantly sensed the presence of another tortured heart. Instead of fear, she was overwhelmed by a brooding sense of kinship—to what, she had no clue.

  Melissa stood and took two steps to Liam who sat, head bowed. Beside him and without a word, she put a hand firmly on each of his shoulders. She touched him as gently as she would cradle Abigail after a bad dream. Cyrus and Patrick both stood at their places and looked down dumbstruck.

  Liam felt Melissa’s hands. When he looked up into her face, his gray eyes were dry and empty. He looked sideways to Cyrus who bent slightly forward when Liam’s pale lips moved and his words came out softly.

  “Spirit Keeper is done with me, Sergeant. All she wanted was my soul and I gave it to her. I’m free now.”

  The smile that spread across Liam’s gaunt face was terrifying. Melissa raised her hand to his cheek and she pushed his face against her soft chest. Liam was still smiling when tears rolled down his face.

  SAN PATRICIO WAS not even a hamlet. A cluster of clapboard and adobe shacks nestled together against winter’s howling wind and summer’s ferocious heat. As hard-faced men with heavy handirons rode into the camp beside the swollen Rio Hondo, the bivouac of Regulators almost made a town out of the widening in the dirt road.

  By Sunday afternoon, Alex and Susan McSween and their company increased the population to nearly fifty. Billy Bonney and John Chisum were there to greet them like returning heroes. But warm welcomes were muted by the sober remembrance of Dick Brewer only three days dead.

  Susan McSween should have been uncomfortable in the company of so many desperate men. But they were like an army and the Regulators regarded her husband as their general. If San Patricio were to become a sovereign country, the austere and aristocratic John Chisum would become its Secretary of State.

  With Lincoln and its House men only twelve miles up the road, San Patricio became a tiny garrison. Pickets were posted around the camp in case George Peppin might lead a posse to disband the Regulators once and for all. By Governor Axtell’s proclamation, they were now vigilantes and nothing more.

  A few Hispanic families called the San Patricio settlement home. They did not welcome these narrow-eyed shootists. The white men packing Colts and Remingtons on their hips steered clear of the Mexicans and their Catholic hovels. Regulators stayed close to the adobe home commandeered for their field headquarters.

  Alex McSween’s pink face continued to wear the wrinkled brow of man uncomfortable in his new element. Firearms did not fit well into the lawyer’s soft hands. He sat uneasily at John Chisum’s table. Billy Bonney looked like a pimple-faced boy beside Chisum’s square jaw and leathery face. The grown men tolerated the teenage firebrand in their midst since he had been close to John Tunstall. Also, like McSween, he had walked both sides of the street in Lincoln and he knew the House.

  When Billy had first arrived in Lincoln in the fall of 1877, his first job had been as a field hand for William Brady. Across Billy’s lap was Brady’s rifle, taken from his corpse heavy with Billy’s bullets. Now Billy was a known killer: he had killed a man in Arizona only eight months before he shot Sheriff Brady. It had been Dick Brewer who hired Billy away from Brady’s ranch to work on Tunstall’s Rio Felix spread. By this April 7th at San Patricio, all but Billy were dead.

  “How long do we just sit here?” McSween sounded nervous. His eyes twitched from the sweat running down his forehead.

  Chisum took a long drag on his pipe. The cattle baron was calm and dignified.

  “Until the time is right for us to take Lincoln back.”

  BONITA RAMOS TOLD Sean that Melissa had returned to town Sunday evening. He waited until Monday morning to knock on her door. As he walked up the street, he could feel the town’s ragamuffin children pointing from the shadows at his disfigured face. His pace quickened.

  “How’s Patrick?”

  Melissa nodded and forced a smile. Then her face darkened.

  “And Liam?”

  The woman lowered her face and shrugged. She shook her head. They were alone since Abigail was across the street in a one-room schoolhouse with ten other children ages six to thirteen. The big ones helped the little ones.

  “Is he sick?”

  Looking up, her expression was difficult to read.

  “The soldier and Patrick will take care of him. He ain’t much more than a boy.”

  Melissa nodded. She agreed.

  Sean sat for half an hour. He sipped hot coffee and avoided Melissa’s penetrating eyes. They haunted him as much as the memory of Grady Rourke who would not stop invading the tall man’s fitful sleep. He did not look at her until his tin cup was empty.

  “Melissa, I need to get away from here for a while.”

  Instantly, her eyes filled. Sean continued before they could spill over into his heart.

  “I want to take you with me, if you’ll come. Abbey can stay with Bonita. She’s a good woman and I think Abbey likes her.” Melissa nodded. “Maybe we could take the buckboard over to Roswell. Jesse says it ain’t as high as here and spring will come earlier down there.” His brow pursed slightly when he looked into her face. “Will you come with me, Melissa Bryant?”

  Blinking her moist eyes, she reached across the table and touched his hard hand. Sean Rourke wished that his heart would stop.

  FOR THE WEEK after Melissa left Grady Rourke’s ranch, Liam recovered his strength, if not his mind. For the first time in five weeks, he slept without dreams or demons. He was back on his feed and Patrick wondered if they would run out of flour and bacon before week’s end. When Liam cleaned his supper plate before the other men, Cyrus would silently shovel food from his plate into Liam’s.

  Liam’s bald head scabbed over into rows of grotesque black crust. During meals, he wore his floppy yellowed, cavalry hat so Patrick and Liam could eat.

  While Liam worked on a new garden plot close to the fenced-in graves of Grady and Shannon Rourke, and three infants too new to have been given names at all, Cyrus and Patrick would speak in hushed voices in the privacy of the barn. Cyrus explained to Patrick the ways of the Cheyenne. When the soldier spoke of campaigns and bloodied grass, his words came in clipped and carefully chosen sentences. His stories of the cavalry felt incomplete to Patrick. But he asked no questions and ex-Sergeant Buchanan offered no answers.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 18TH, Cyrus saw the buckboard first. He called to Liam and Patrick who came up from the barn. Bonita Ramos drove the two-horse team and Abigail Bryant sat at her side. The child was bright-eyed and happy.

  The three men greeted their guests in warm sunshine. Patrick lifted Abigail out of the wagon and Cyrus put his large hands around Bonita’s waist. Cyrus
noticed baskets and blankets in the back of the buckboard.

  “On a picnic?” the soldier asked.

  “We come to stay for two weeks,” the little girl replied cheerfully. “Uncle Sean said it was all right.”

  Patrick glanced at Liam and then toward Bonita.

  “Sean and Melissa have gone down to Roswell for a few days.”

  “Oh.” Patrick looked thoughtful. “Do you need a place to stay? We have room, I suppose.”

  For her answer, the dark-faced woman leaned over the wagon’s side and pulled out two of the baskets. Wonderful vapors drifted from the food inside. She handed two baskets to each man and half of the blankets to Abigail. Bonita took the last of the blankets in her arms.

  “I thought you lived at the Wortley?” Patrick struggled to make sense of the unannounced visit.

  “I had a room there and a shack in town. But the House is out of business and Jimmy Dolan sent word down from Santa Fe to move the help out. He’s up there with his leg broke.”

  “What do you mean out of business?” Cyrus looked as confused as Patrick.

  “Closed up yesterday. Dolan just sent word down to lock the doors and be done with it. The House ain’t in business no more after yesterday. Ain’t that something?” Bonita did not sound too disappointed.

  “What will you do when you go back to town? Where will you work?” Cyrus was already feeling a vague sense of trouble. A woman—and a child—had just shown up on his doorstep, which was not even his.

  “Maybe Tunstall’s store will open again. Maybe Jimmy will keep the Wortley open and let me come back. I’ll worry about all that when Melissa and Sean come back next week.”

  Cyrus shook his head as Patrick led the way toward the house. He was already figuring where the menfolk would sleep: perhaps one in the greatroom and two in the barn. The thought of sleeping in the barn made Patrick look at Liam’s covered head as they walked into the house.

  Bonita looked at the morning’s dishes still laying on the table. Longjohns of white and red were strewn over the backs of several chairs. Abigail giggled as Patrick quickly gathered up the underwear.

  “A woman’s touch for a few days won’t do no harm in here, Patrick.”

  “I suppose not.” He sniffed the baskets of food. He had not been hungry when she rode up the lane.

  “I’ll fatten the lot of you up by the time Melissa gets home.”

  Patrick heaved the longjohns up into the loft. He and Cyrus removed their hats in the house. Liam did not.

  Bonita looked at Liam. Although his face had filled out, his eyes still had a sickly blankness to them. The light behind them that the woman remembered seemed extinguished.

  When Liam felt her eyes looking at him, he reached up and removed his hat too.

  Bonita and Abigail stepped back and gasped. Liam only smiled, except for his eyes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE ROUGH TRAIL WAS NARROW AND BUMPY FOR NEARLY SIXTY miles on the south bank of the brown waters of the Aqua Negro creek. Where the thawing ground completely absorbed the stream, the trail continued eastward for another six miles.

  The rocky trail ran parallel to the main stage road, twenty miles to the south which skirted the north bank of the fastrunning Rio Hondo.

  Sean drove the wagon on the grinding trail to avoid packs of Regulators who might be prowling the main road, which led westward to San Patricio.

  The buckboard bounced to the crest of a dry hilI overlooking two shanties perched precariously beside the Rio Hondo.

  “Roswell,” he sighed in comfortable, early spring sunshine on Wednesday, April 24th.

  Melissa’s eyes widened at the dismal landscape. The expression on her silent, sweating face asked if the rock farm down the hill was the end of seven days of tooth-rattling trail?

  Sean pointed to a shack of peeling pine timbers that stood five hundred yards away from the two main buildings, which sat side-by-side. The lone structure had a paddock beside it. Two mules stood motionless in a corner.

  “A friend of Jesse lives in that one. Jesse said we would be welcomed. We can stay the week, he said.”

  The woman shrugged, wiped her brow, and rested her hand on Sean’s knee. A flick of the reins moved the team down the hill. Sean stopped at the white-washed, bark hovel.

  He lifted Melissa from the wagon when the cabin door opened. A man came out, so filthy and grizzled that Melissa inched slightly behind Sean.

  “Jesse Evans sent us.”

  The man stepped into the bright afternoon sunshine. Although he was a white man, his face was blackened by the high desert sun and wind. He did not wear a hat. Looking closer at his sweating cheeks, Melissa saw brown, irregular patches of skin cancer. His face looked worse than Sean’s.

  “I see,” the dishevelled man said. “Jesse ain’t sent nobody during the winter. You be the first this year. I’m Hansen.”

  “First name or last?”

  “Don’t matter out here.”

  “I’m Sean Rourke. This here is Melissa.”

  The man with one name gestured with his right hand as if he were tipping an imaginary hat. He squinted toward the couple and studied Sean’s face so long that Sean felt uncomfortable.

  “You Grady’s boy?”

  “Yes.” Sean sounded surprised.

  “Your father came down here over the years. Twice, maybe three times.”

  Sean felt suddenly sickened. He already longed to leave.

  “Soup’s hot. Unhitch the animals and put ’em in with mine.” Hansen turned his back on his guests and shuffled inside. Melissa looked up at Sean. She waited for him to unhook the two horses and lead them inside the fence. The gate was secured by a leather thong. The horses dropped their faces toward sparse scrub grass. Two mules only flicked their pointed ears in the horses’ direction, but did not go over to investigate.

  “SONSABITCHES!” JIMMY DOLAN shouted over a telegram on his sickbed in Santa Fe. “Sonsabitches!” Acting Sheriff George Peppin shouted in William Brady’s old chair.

  “Sonsabitches!” Billy Bonney began shouting half a mile from the Regulators’ headquarters at San Patricio. He skidded his winded horse to a halt so hard that the animal tossed a shoe with the curved nails still attached. The horse hobbled under saddle into a paddock full of Regulator mounts.

  John Chisum and Alex McSween came out into the Thursday afternoon sun. Sue McSween kept close to her husband. Rob Widenmann came out with his shiny, oiled Peacemaker drawn and cocked. Looking up at the lawyer, Billy continued a little jig in the mud with his breathless chorus of “Sonsabitches, Mister McSween!” Widenmann put his piece to leather when he recognized Billy.

  “What the hell’s got into you, Billy Bonney?” Chisum demanded, completely out of patience. Three weeks of beans, flour tortillas, and rancid alkaline water had blown the starch and dignity out of the cattleman during hourly trips to the privy.

  The teenage killer stopped twirling and wiped an oily glaze of sweat onto his filthy sleeve.

  “The Grand Jury, Mr. Chisum! The Grand Jury down in Mesilla done ex-honored Mr. McSween there. I slipped into Lincoln this morning and got it straight from the telegraph operator.”

  “Exonerated, you mean?” McSween asked, stepping slightly in front of Chisum.

  “That’s what I said, ain’t it? They threw out the case agin’ you on old man Fritz’s business.” Billy slapped his dusty hat on his frayed knee. “And damn if they didn’t ’dite Jesse Evans and three of the Boys for bushwhacking Mr. Tunstall. Jimmy Dolan got ’dited too.”

  “Indicted, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir.” Billy paused and caught his breath. Wiping his face again, he seemed to puff out his narrow chest against his suspenders. “And I’m famous now, too. Old Judge Bristol done indicted me for doing over Sheriff Brady and his deputy. Seems the judge also made John Copeland sheriff and fired Peppin.” Billy was beaming to the little crowd of men who gathered around him. “Hell, Mr. Chisum. We’re all famous now. The judge indicted the whole da
mned lot of us for killing Andy Roberts at the sawmill.”

  Billy exhaled a long breath and closed his cracked lips over his buck teeth. His bulletin had exhausted him more than his break-neck gallop to San Patricio. A murmur simmered through the assembled Regulators—itinerant farmers, mainly, and hired hands masquerading as gunfighters.

  “Well,” John Chisum said gravely. He was more concerned about diarrhea than politics. “Well. Congratulations, Alex.”

  Chisum screwed his hat on and pushed through the throng toward the nearest out house.

  Susan McSween squeezed her husband’s arm.

  “Thank God, Mac.”

  SATURDAY MORNING AFTER three nights sleeping in Hansen’s back room, Melissa awoke in a soggy pool of perspiration. Sean stirred in his longjohns. Half of his body was wet with the naked woman’s night-sweat.

  First light drifted faintly through the glassless window above their narrow bed. A blanket hanging limply from the doorway separated them from the dark-faced man who slept on the dirt floor in the shack’s one main room. Even through the cloth door, Sean could smell Hansen’s sleeping body.

  Melissa lay on her back. Her eyes were closed tightly and she breathed in short, shallow breaths through her wideopen mouth. While his mind struggled to waken, Sean propped his head on his hand and looked at the woman. Dawn made her moist body glisten. He studied her ample breasts and the new roundness of her belly that rose and fell with each labored breath. Sean sucked in his wind at her breath-taking beauty.

  Then Melissa jerked upright with her eyes still closed. She grabbed her shining midsection and doubled over against Sean. She groaned softly from deep inside. It was the first sound Sean had ever heard from her.

  “Melissa?” He leaned over her and pulled the matted hair from her face. She softly whimpered and rocked against his thigh. In the light of a new day, Sean could see that her face was flushed. Her breath came more and more rapidly in short, weakening pants. When Sean touched her side, he was stunned to feel how cold she was even though the stuffy room was warm and she was bathed in sweat.