The Brothers O'Brien

by J. A. Johnstone

  “I reckon your boys are making that pretty obvious,” Samuel said.

  Before his plans for Dromore, all Whitney felt for the O’Brien brothers was indifference. But now they were enemies and he didn’t much feel like engaging them in conversation, especially since the new arrival was so hostile. He’d do plenty of talking later—but with guns.

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure, Mr. O’Brien,” he said. “But please keep out of my business.”

  “Just so long as your business doesn’t endanger Dromore,” Samuel said.

  Whitney was startled. Does this man know? It is impossible. He relaxed, taking his coffee, to the opposite end of the porch, where he sat on a chair and vanished into his fur coat like a snail into its shell.

  “It was cold-blooded murder,” Samuel O’Brien said, as they were gathered around the parlor table. “They rounded up the herders and just shot them down.”

  “That’s why we were out there,” Shawn said. “We hoped to warn the herders to hide in the hills.” He made an expressive gesture with his hands. “We didn’t find any.”

  Jacob cupped his hands around his coffee. “The way Whitney sees it, the more herders he kills, the less the chance there is of them driving woolies onto Dromore grass.”

  “Our range is not in great shape,” Samuel said. “We didn’t have a big die-off like some other ranches, but the grass suffered. Sheep would just about tip us over the edge.”

  Jacob smiled. “So, is Whitney our friend or our enemy? What do I do, Sam, hug him or shoot him?”

  “We’re in the midst of the melancholy dilemma of being unable to make peace, yet unable to make war.” Patrick’s glasses were steamed up from hot coffee, and his eyes were invisible.

  “That’s one way of saying it.” Jacob looked at Samuel. “Well, do we kick Whitney’s ass or not?”

  “Hell, Jacob, I don’t know,” Samuel said.

  “What does the colonel say?”

  “He says we’re to keep sheep off our range. The how-to-do-it of the thing, he left up to me.”

  “All right, then Whitney is our friend.”

  “We’re making a pact with the devil, seems to me,” Shawn said.

  Ironside had been silent, but now he spoke. “There is a way. We chase Whitney and his hired guns off the Estancia. The sheepherders stay where they are and go back to what they do best, tending sheep.”

  “I don’t want Dromore involved in a range war,” Samuel said. “You know how many men died in the Mason County War? The official count was ten, but at least three times that number were killed.”

  “Even ten is too many,” Patrick said, wiping his glasses with his shirt.

  Samuel was quiet, thinking. Then he said, “We do what the colonel said. Now we’re all together again, we head north and keep the woolies off our range.” He looked around the parlor table. “Anybody object to that plan?” His question was met with silence. “Anybody?” When his question was met with silence a second time, Samuel said, “Then we’re agreed. We’ll spend the night here at the hotel and ride out in the morning.”

  “What if it comes to killing, Sam?” Jacob said.

  Samuel answered without a moment’s hesitation. “We do what it takes.”

  “Amen.” Ironside’s eyes were like pieces of blue flint.

  By noon, the sky clouded again, and by three the snow started coming straight down like white paint flaking off the dark wall of the day. The crystalline air was so hard that when a man took a breath he felt as though he was swallowing iron nails. Winter clenched the suffering land in its fist and showed no sign of ever letting go.

  Just as the afternoon faded, an old man led a burro through the remnants of the day, walking stiffly as if the cold had rusted his joints. He cradled a Henry rifle in his left arm, and a silver dollar with a bullet hole through it adorned the front of his fur hat. Over the back of the burro, facedown, was the half-naked body of a man—or what was left of a man.

  The oldster stopped outside the hotel, the only building of any significance in Estancia, cupped a hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Anybody to home?”

  Wilfred Spooner, the desk clerk, stepped onto the porch. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and vigorously rubbed the outsides of his biceps. “What do you want? It’s freezing out here.” His gaze took in the old man’s ragged coat and pants, and said, “We have no rooms available.”

  “Name’s Silas Cade, sonny,” the old man said. “I’m lookin’ fer an undertaker and a lawman, if’n you have either one o’ them.”

  “We have neither.” Spooner shivered, a drip at his nose. He saw the body, and said, “Who is that?”

  “I don’t know, sonny. I found him up by Buffalo Draw. His boots and spurs say Texas, but the Apaches had been at him, so it’s hard to tell who he wuz or what he wuz.”

  “Apaches?” Spooner said, shocked.

  “That’s what I said, sonny. I reckon three or four of ’em jumped him, prob’ly broncos who didn’t surrender at Skeleton Canyon with ol’ Geronimo.”

  The clerk made a face. “Well, whoever he is, take him away.”

  “I got nowhere to take him, sonny. That’s why I figured to bring him here. Ain’t you got a place to bury a man?”

  “We’d have to dynamite a hole for him,” Spooner said. “And that isn’t going to happen. Now, get him out of here.”

  Before Cade could answer, Joel Whitney brushed past Spooner and stepped to the burro.

  “You recognize him, mister?” Cade asked.

  The dead man had no eyes or tongue and both his ears had been severed. He’d been scalped, and his body, naked from the waist up, was covered in small burns. Cactus needles, dozens of them, had been thrust into his skin and then set alight.

  Suddenly Whitney’s mouth was dry, and he felt a green sickness coil in his belly. Charlie Packett had died hard, and it had taken a long time.

  “You know him, mister?” Cade asked again.

  Whitney nodded. “I know him.”

  Jacob O’Brien had been watching from his bedroom window. He went downstairs and joined Whitney in the street. Taking one look at the corpse, he said, “Charlie Packett?”

  “Yeah, it’s him,” Whitney said.

  “Found him up by Buffalo Draw where I was prospecting,” Cade said to Jacob. “Looks like Apaches had been at him for hours afore I came on him.”

  “Hell of a thing for a man to die like that,” Jacob said.

  “Uh-huh,” Cade said. “But when it comes to Apaches, I’ve seen worse. Why, I recollect one time down Arizony way . . .”

  The old man rambled on, but Whitney wasn’t listening. He was worrying. Packett had obviously been killed before he contacted Clay Stanley or any of the others, so his men were still out there. Now he’d have to comb the valley and find them himself. The prospect didn’t appeal to him, but he had no other choice. With a bit of luck, he could get his Texans back to Estancia before the O’Briens left. Once the brothers were out of the way, Dromore was as good as his.

  Whitney returned to his immediate problem. Cade was still babbling, but he cut the old prospector short. “Where are you headed?”

  “Back the way I come, I reckon.”

  Whitney fished in the pocket of his fur coat, then counted five dollars into his palm. He offered the money to Cade. “Find a place along the trail to leave his body. This will compensate you for your trouble.”

  “Aren’t you going to bury your own dead, Whitney?” Jacob said.

  “I’d need dynamite, and I don’t have time for that,” Whitney said. “Besides, Packett didn’t amount to anything.” As he stepped away, he said to Cade. “Hide him under a rock or something. There isn’t that much of him left to bury.”

  After Whitney left—in the direction of the barn, Jacob noticed—Cade said, “I cain’t really say that I like that feller.”

  “Not too many folks around here do.” Jacob jerked his head in the direction of the body. “If you’re staying the night, I’ll help you stash
that out back until morning.”

  “I reckon not, sonny,” Cade said. “I cain’t abide a roof over my head unless I’m in bed with a whore.” He rubbed his scrubby jaw. “Let you buy me a rum punch afore I leave, though.”

  The mixing of a rum punch was within Mrs. Hazel’s abilities, and she made enough for Cade and Jacob, and for Patrick, who’d joined them in the parlor.

  “Good to feel a fire again,” the old man said, sticking out his boots toward the flames. He tried his drink and said to Mrs. Hazel, who was on her way out the door, “My compliments, ma’am. This is an elegant cocktail to be sure.”

  The woman was as surprised as Jacob and Patrick. Cade, as rough an old man as any of them had set eyes upon, had obviously spent time around high-toned ladies and men with manners.

  Patrick, thinking about it later, decided that Silas Cade was probably one of the old coots who had struck it rich and gone on to make and lose fortunes.

  Jacob sat where he could look outside and watch for Whitney’s comings and goings. Something about the man’s recent behavior troubled him, but he couldn’t put a finger on why.

  “Silas, the silver dollar on your hat,” Patrick said. “Does that have a story to tell?”

  Cade grinned, showing toothless gums. “It surely does, sonny. Back in the summer o’ ’76 I was in Deadwood up in the Dakota Territory, and Wild Bill Hickok, who was showing off to some Eastern folks, says to me, ‘Silas, take this silver dollar and hold it up where I can see it. If I shoot it out of your fingers, you can have the dollar and another ten besides.’”

  The old man cackled and slapped his knee. “Dang me, if I didn’t say I’d do it. Of course, I was drunk at the time, and Bill was drunker. Well, anyhoo, I held the dollar in these two fingers”—he extended his right thumb and forefinger—“and ol’ Bill drawed his Navy an’ shot the coin dead center. Later, he said to me, ‘Silas, that was true blue. Only a white man would’ve held steady the way you did.” Cade pointed to his hat. “I’ve kept that dollar ever since.”

  Patrick laughed, but Jacob had only been half listening. His face was thoughtful as he saw Whitney ride out with a sack of supplies tied to his saddle horn. The man headed north. Why? Is he leaving to join his men to again wage war on the herders? Or does he have something else in mind?

  Jacob had questions but no answers, and that troubled him. But, lurking like a malevolent shadow at the back of his mind was one thing he did know—Dromore was to the north. Stripped of its riders, the ranch was something it had never been before . . . vulnerable.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Donna Aracela insisted on a night burial. She watched the vaqueros screw down the lid of her father’s coffin, then hoist it onto their shoulders, her mouth a tight line under her concealing black veil. Torches were lit, and the droning Father Diego led the melancholy procession out of the chapel and into the snow-draped darkness.

  She walked behind the coffin, dozens of wailing women in her wake, and her sigh was lost in the infernal racket. She was already cold, and the north wind continued to tear at her. The old man was already burning in hell, so the sooner they put him away forever, and let her get back to her warm room, the better.

  The priest, concerned for Aracela’s well-being, sent back an altar boy wearing a white cassock, to help her walk the distance to the family vault, weighed down as she was by sorrow.

  She gratefully accepted the boy’s help, or so it appeared to the other mourners, as she leaned on him for support. The boy smelled of cow dung and dirty clothes, and she held a perfumed lace handkerchief to her nose, hoping the women who walked behind her would think she was crying.

  The procession halted at the bronze doors to the vault, and Aracela fumed when it was discovered that no one had remembered to bring the key to its massy padlock. She stood, leaning on the smelly altar boy, while a servant was dispatched to retrieve the key from its hook in the chapel.

  Snow fell around her, making her feet numb. The boy put his hand on her ass, but she didn’t slap it away. She smiled. That’s all right boy, feel something you were born never to have.

  Finally a key was produced and she stood aside as the coffin was carried inside. Away from the torchlight, she got a chance to pinch the boy’s cheek, pressing hard. The peon danced in pain, and her fingernails dug deeper. Then, bleeding, he cried out and ran into the darkness. The onlookers smiled sadly at one another and whispered that the young ones were always afraid to be around death.

  The vault was a large, marble structure built a hundred and fifty years before by one of Aracela’s ancestors. When she stepped inside to hear the priest prattle prayers, she was surrounded by cobwebbed coffins, including her brother’s. The place smelled dank of the ancient dead.

  Finally it was over. Her long ordeal was at an end. The old goat was buried and good riddance.

  “Donna Aracela,” Father Diego said as they stood outside in the cold and snow, “if you wish, I will come to the hacienda and pray with you, if you desire to spend the night in holy vigil.”

  “No Padre,” Aracela said. “Tonight I wish to sorrow alone.”

  The priest smiled. “I understand.” He made a sign of the cross over her. “May God bless you, my child, and give you succor in your time of such great sadness and loss.”

  “Thank you, Padre.”

  Donna Aracela stripped off her mourning weeds and changed into a nightgown of sheer black silk, imported from Paris. She brushed out her hair so it cascaded black and shining over her shoulders, then poured herself a glass of wine. She’d put off going through her father’s papers until he was buried, but her agreement with Whitney made the task more urgent. The little man would no doubt require money again, and she would need to have it readily available.

  A fine fire burned in her father’s study as she sat at his desk, snow feathering past the window behind her. She piled ledgers on the desktop and picked up a pen, but found it difficult to concentrate. The prospect of ravaging a girl in the tomb had excited her, yet she felt let down, like the aftermath of sex with a man who climaxed too quickly.

  With the end of the pen in her teeth, Aracela glanced out the window. When Dromore is mine, I’ll winter there and summer at the hacienda, at least, those years I don’t feel like traveling to Paris, Rome, or London. Finally she had found a thought that pleased her, and she smiled as she opened the topmost ledger.

  Someone rapped on the door, and then stepped inside.

  “Otilio,” Aracela said, “how dare you intrude on me like this?”

  The vaquero crossed the floor to the desk, a strange, luminous light in his eyes. “We have to talk.”

  “Talk? What do you and I have to talk about that can’t wait until morning?”

  “Our wedding day.”

  For a few moments, Aracela sat stunned. Then she smiled, and her smile grew into a laugh. “Surely,” she gasped, “you don’t think for one minute that I’d marry you, a penniless peon who owns nothing but a horse and saddle.”

  Otilio’s skin tightened across his cheekbones. “You’re a whore, Aracela. I thought about preserving my honor by killing you, But realized I love you too much for that. Now I offer you marriage, and a way to move from a life of debauchery to my wife.”

  “And if I don’t?” Aracela asked. “If I don’t wish to cook and clean for you and wash your stinking rags, what then?”

  The vaquero was angry clean through, and failed to see, or chose to ignore, the cold blue ice in the woman’s eyes. “If you don’t, Aracela, I will go to the authorities and tell them how you ordered me to kill your father,” Otilio said. “My silence will be your bride price, and I promise it will be paid it in full.”

  “Otilio, for a while you amused me,” Aracela said, “but now you start to bore me. Know this. I’d rather marry a cur dog off the street than marry a nothing like you.”

  The young vaquero’s hand dropped to his waist and he came up with a knife. “Aracela, please say you’ll marry me.” His black eyes signaled his torm
ent. “I don’t want to kill you. You are my love . . . my life.”

  Aracela sat back in her chair. She smiled—sympathetically, she hoped. “Come here, poor Otilio,” she whispered. “Come closer.”

  Her hand right hand was in an open drawer. Her scarlet lips pulled back from white teeth as she said, “We will talk about this without rancor. Now put away your knife.”

  The vaquero’s head bent as he readied to sheath his knife. It was all the time Aracela needed. She pulled a Smith & Wesson .38 from the drawer, pointed the gun at his chest, and fired.

  Otilio absorbed the hit, but took a step back, his eyes moving from the bleeding wound in his chest to Aracela. Emotions fleeted across his shocked face, surprise, disappointment, sadness, and finally, fear. “Aracela,” he whispered, “you have killed me.”

  “Just so, Otilio,” the woman said. She fired again, and then a third time. The vaquero slumped to the ground, disbelief in his eyes, failing to comprehend the reason for his dying.

  Aracela heard screams and thudding feet outside her door. She quickly put down the gun, then ripped the nightgown from her breasts. Using her nails, she taloned the front of her left shoulder, drawing blood, leaving five crimson gashes.

  “Help me!” Aracela screamed. “Mother of God, help me!”

  The door burst open and three male servants ran inside, one of them holding a shotgun. A new maid held back, looking fearfully into the room.

  Aracela pointed to Otilio’s body. “He tried to rape me!” she yelled. “I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. When he threw me across the desk, I managed to get my father’s gun.” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh God, please tell me he’s not dead.”

  One of the men kneeled by the vaquero’s body. “I’m sorry, Donna Aracela. But this man is gone.”

  She wailed, tears streaming down her face. “How could he do this when he knew I was in mourning?”

  “He hurt you, patron,” the man said. “Your shoulder . . .”