Several men with cow muck on their boots turned around when the door opened. They quickly sized up the two new men and then returned to their business of visiting in the open area or leaning against the long bar. Others came and went through the hallway leading to the cantina. More than half of the faces were Hispanic.
“Like I said,” Liam smiled. “Only your coin has to be the right color on Saturday night.”
Cyrus nodded, gradually becoming more comfortable. The night clerk shuffled toward them.
“Buenos dias,” the little man said showing more black spaces than teeth.
“Good evening,” Liam said. “We’re looking for Sean Rourke.”
“Sí, señor, he’s in the cantina—through that hallway.”
“Thank you.”
Liam led Cyrus into the shadows. Cigar and pipe smoke filled the hallway and the cantina was packed with loudmen and the kind of women who do not require their men to have clean fingernails. Only one of the women in the room was not dressed in chorus-girl costume and did not have a face caked with grease paint. Her beautiful face was clean. When she glanced toward the hallway, Liam was struck by her incredibly violet eyes. She stood between two men sitting at a large, round table. One man was Jesse Evans. The other had a disfigured face and he did not look up as the pocket-heavy cowboys came and went during their night on the tiny town.
“There,” Liam gestured with a cock of his head. “That’s my brother.”
Sean did not look up until he felt two men standing beside him. When he did, it took a moment for him to recognize the brother who was a pimple-faced boy when last he had seen him. The oldest brother stood. Without a word, he stepped forward and wrapped his long arms around Liam.
“Sean,” Liam said softly. He separated from Sean’s embrace and looked into the burned face. Enough sunlight still poured through the windows to brighten the ghastly purple wound. Liam concentrated on Sean’s clear, pale eyes. He did not remember the flecks of gray in his brother’s hair and whiskers.
“Liam. Damned good to see you. When did you get into town?”
“Yesterday. This here is Cyrus Buchanan. We rode together up north.”
Sean looked at the faded stripes on the black man’s blue shirt and quickly extended his hand.
“Sergeant. Thanks for keeping an eye on Liam here.”
“Didn’t have to do much of that. The boy’s a fine soldier.”
“Retired soldier,” Liam said eagerly. “Gentleman farmer now.”
“Oh?” Sean’s face became serious. “You’ve been out to Pa’s?”
“Yes. Staying with Patrick.”
“Oh.” Sean turned back to the five men sitting around him. “This is Jesse Evans and a few of the men who ride with him. And this is Melissa Bryant, a friend of mine.”
Melissa nodded and said nothing. Jesse Evans smiled and made half a salute with a wave of his hand toward Cyrus.
Sean pulled out two of the empty chairs and gestured toward Liam and Cyrus. No one raised an eyebrow when Cyrus sat in the company of half a dozen white men. He was beginning to like Lincoln’s easy ways.
“What’ll you boys be having?” Jesse sounded cordial. Melissa leaned toward Liam.
“Maybe whiskey,” Liam smiled.
“Same,” Cyrus said firmly.
Melissa turned and pushed through the crowded hallway.
The smoke in the cantina burned Liam’s eyes. He reached into the pocket of his long duster and pulled out a black brick of tobacco. During the long chase of Chief Joseph’s band through the cold northland, he had given up smoking and took to chewing to keep his throat warm. He bit off a chaw and handed the rest of the wad to Cyrus who did likewise.
“You learned some nasty habits in the Army, little brother.” Sean was grinning and his good cheek bulged with his own chaw.
“Seems so,” Liam chuckled. “Done worse than this even. But you remember how it was.”
Sean nodded silently. He remembered.
“The boy says you was in uniform?” Cyrus looked at the good half of Sean’s face.
“The gray,” the older brother said with almost an apology in his voice.
Cyrus looked into Sean’s weary eyes.
“Soldiers is soldiers,” the black man said.
Sean nodded. He liked the company his brother kept.
Melissa returned with two shot glasses. Cheap liquor dripped from her fingers. She laid a glass in front of Liam and Cyrus.
“Thanks, ma’am,” Sergeant Buchanan said warmly. The woman nodded and walked to another table.
“She don’t say much,” Liam noted toward Sean.
“No. You going to stay with Patrick?”
“For a while, I suppose. Till we sort out Pa’s business.”
“We can do that now that you’re home.”
“That’s what Patrick said. How come you ain’t living at the ranch with us?”
Sean looked down at his empty glass. He shifted his chaw from his live cheek to the dead one, which bulged wrinkled and blue.
Liam felt a slap on his shoulder. He looked sideways to see Jesse Evans pulling his hand back and smiling broadly.
“Because the company’s better at the Wortley, boy. Ain’t that so, Deputy?”
Liam looked at his brother.
“Deputy?”
“Yes. I needed the work. Our brother runs Chisum cattle on Pa’s land and I work for the sheriff.”
“I wouldn’t have figured you for a lawman, Sean. Guess times change.” There was a twinkle in Liam’s blue eyes.
“Yes.”
“You boys come to town in time for fireworks all right,” Jesse Evans slurred his words merrily. “We fought the Revolution all over again this week, boy.”
Liam glanced toward his brother for an explanation.
“An Englishman was killed by a posse on Monday. Nasty business.” Sean was talking to his empty glass but loud enough for Liam to hear over the cheerful noise surrounding them.
“Were you there?”
Sean did not look up.
“Reckon so.” Sean raised his empty glass and held it airborne. In a moment, Bonita Ramos took it out of his hand and left a full glass. Lowering the glass to the wet tabletop, the older brother faced Liam. “You been to the lawyer’s?”
“Not yet. My letter was from a Mr. McSween.”
“He ain’t around just now,” Jesse answered for Sean. “He’s on his way to jailor maybe he’s already feeding the coyotes beside the road to Mesilla.” The blond man laughed, heartily amused.
“McSween’s partner is Mr. Shield,” Sean said over Jesse’s loudness. “His office is across the way in Tunstall’s store. Tunstall is the man the posse killed.”
“Does Shield have Pa’s papers?”
“Yes.”
“You seen Pa’s will?”
“Yes. What did Patrick tell you?”
“Nothing. Just that you wanted to stay in town.”
Sean nodded and sucked down his sour mash in one gulp. He raised the empty glass again. The half-Mexican woman replaced it within half a minute. She paused only long enough to smile warmly at Cyrus who returned the courtesy with a face full of grin.
“Patrick and I saw the will when we rode in five weeks ago.” Sean swigged bis whiskey and laid the dirty glass on the table before he looked hard into Liam’s wind-burned face. “Pa left everything to you and Patrick. Cut me out. He ain’t had no cause to do me that way.”
Liam looked stunned.
“Why?”
“Must have had his reasons. But that don’t have nothing to do with you and me. Blood is blood.”
“What about Patrick? He said you ain’t talking to him.”
“I ain’t ready for that yet. Besides, there’s two sides in this town. Jesse Evans here and the Sheriff is on the side of the House—the mercantile across the street. Patrick took up with Tunstall’s side of the street and McSween and Chisum. Chisum cattle are grazing Pa’s land. You stay with Patrick and you’ve chose sides,
Liam.”
“But we’re kin.” With only one whiskey in him, Liam was already having trouble following the argument, if an argument it was. “Besides, I ain’t got any money to move into town. We don’t get our government script for another month, if then.”
“You can work for us,” Jesse answered for Sean. “Sheriff Brady can always use another gun.” He looked across the table toward Cyrus. “Even a black one.”
Liam looked down at the soggy table. He blinked as the memory of Indian blood running across the high plains swept through his mind like a river of red.
“I seen enough trouble to last me, Sean. I come home to settle up Pa’s affairs and to make something grow. I want to plant or ranch. I want to do something what does no harm.” Liam blinked suddenly moist eyes. “I ain’t about to hurt nobody no more.”
Sean laid his large hand upon his brother’s shoulder.
“That’s all right, boy. I come home for the same thing. I truly did.” The blue side of Sean’s face twitched. “But I just ain’t got no place to do it right now. Pa seen to that.”
Cyrus studied the youngest brother’s anguished face. All winter in a cavalry saddle had reddened his face and hard liquor made it even redder. The big man in Army blue pushed his empty glass away.
“If we go across the street, Liam, maybe you can see that lawyer and we can get home before midnight.”
“Yes. We better go, Sean.”
“All right. Is the sergeant living at Pa’s, too?”
“Just till I move on,” Cyrus answered.
Sean nodded as Liam and Cyrus stood. Just as they pushed their chairs under the table, Bonita and Melissa came over to stand beside the table. Liam looked into the silent women’s wide blue eyes and he remembered the color of slow moving water in the Red Fork of the Powder River in the Bighorn Mountains. Melissa was paralyzed by the strange and terrified look in Liam’s eyes. She stood beside him and inhaled the cloud of whiskey fumes pouring out of him as he stood transfixed by her eyes.
The liquor running through Liam’s brain carried him to the Red Fork. In a heartbeat, the white-washed adobe walls of the cantina evaporated. He saw only Melissa’s clear blue eyes and the cigar smoke halo around her long black hair smelled suddenly like sulfur smoke. The black hair was on the ground everyWhere.
In the warm saloon heated by warm-blooded men, loose women, and blazing pine in the fireplace, Liam felt cold. He shivered. He felt the dawn chill of the 25th day of November 1876. Like tonight, it was a Saturday. Colonel Ranald Mackensie’s eleven hundred troopers of the 4th Cavalry were storming down upon the Cheyenne village of chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf. Forty of four hundred Cheyenne were slaughtered. When the soldiers found blood-soaked uniforms from George Custer’s last battle concealed in the village, two hundred lodges were burned.
The white men laughed during the night when the temperature plunged below freezing and eleven Cheyenne infants froze to death at their mothers’ breasts.
“Liam?”
The brother shuddered when he felt a hard hand on his arm. He broke his stare from Melissa and turned.
“Sergeant Buchanan. Sir.”
“It’s all right, boy. It’s all right. We have to go.”
“Yes. Yes,” Liam stammered. His shaking hand raised his hat to his brow. “Yes.”
The two men pushed their way through the crowd toward the hallway and the street. Sean Rourke watched his brother’s back as he shuffled at the black soldier’s side. Liam only came up to Cyrus Buchanan’s massive shoulders. By the time they walked outside, the bustling dirt street was dark under an overcast and starless sky.
“Ain’t it funny?” Jesse Evans laughed loudly across from Sean.
“What?”
“Niggers is welcome where you ain’t.”
SUNDAY MORNING CAME on an ill wind driving sleet which slashed across the Sacramento Mountains. Liam slept off his whiskey until seven o’clock. By the time he found the hot coffee pot on the hearth stones, Cyrus and Patrick had already worked an hour in the barn, shoring up siding that the bitter wind had loosened during the night.
“Then what did Shield say?” Patrick was bundled in his fur trail duster and a woollen scarf, which pulled his hat brim down over his ears. Cyrus worked in shirt sleeves and no hat.
“The lawyer told the boy that your daddy had the right to cut off Sean so long as Mr. Rourke had his mind when he wrote the will. The lawyer says he knew your daddy and his mind was sound when he wrote it.”
“Sean took it real hard, Cyrus.”
“Yes. We seen him at the Wortley. He talked like he might come ’round in time. But everyone talked about taking up sides like it some kind of war in that town.”
“And Sean thinks I’ve taken the Englishman’s side ’cause I had to continue Pa’s lease of the pasture to Chisum.”
“Seems to be.”
Patrick covered his face when the barn door opened to let in a wave of sleet. Ice pellets bounced across the dirt floor like tiny wet marbles. Liam had to use both hands to close the heavy door when he entered.
“Got your beauty sleep?” Patrick smiled.
“Says the man who slept through Saturday,” Liam laughed. He held a cup of coffee which was already cold just from the walk to the barn. “Need a hand?”
“Sure.” Cyrus pointed toward a pile of barn siding in an empty stall. Half a dozen stalls were filled with the saddle and pack horses.
While Liam walked toward the stall, the door flew open again. Both brothers thought the wind had done it. But Billy Bonney led an icicled horse into the barn, dropped the reins, and pulled the doors shut.
“I knocked,” Billy said where he shivered. His horse turned his mousey brown face to lick his sides near the saddle where chunks of sleet dangled from his winter coat. “Mind if I keep my mount out of that weather?”
“Not at all,” Patrick said cordially. “Liam, this is Billy Bonney. He worked for Tunstall at the store till Brady closed the place. Billy: my brother, Liam, and Sergeant Cyrus Buchanan, late of the U.S. Cavalry.”
Billy took off his snow-covered hat.
“Liam. Sergeant Buchanan.”
“Mr. Bonney. Call me Cyrus. I’m retired now.”
“Cyrus.” Billy turned toward Patrick. “You might want to come to town today, Patrick.”
“In this weather?” The howling wind nearly drowned out his voice. Slits between the barn’s siding acted like a huge musical instrument. Each crack resonated with its own tone and the wind moaned through the west wall like a wood-wind orchestra.
“What could be that damned important, Billy?”
“Mr. McSween’s come to town. And Justice Wilson—Justice of the Peace—is going to hold a meeting about Mr. Tunstall’s death.”
“Murder, you mean.” Patrick put down his three-pound hammer.
“Yes, murder. Wilson and McSween are having a meeting this afternoon. Going to fonn a posse to hunt down Tunstall’s killers.”
Patrick thought of Sean who rode with the killer deputies.
“A posse to hunt down another posse? What about Sheriff Brady?”
“Brady ain’t invited. Just boys from the right side of the street. You saw what them others did to Tunstall. You have to come.”
“It ain’t my fight, Billy. I have a ranch to run.”
“You won’t have a ranch if Jimmy Dolan and his kind have their way. John Wilson is all that stands between us and a war in the middle of town.”
“Who’s the law in Lincoln? Brady or Wilson?”
“Both,” Billy sighed with fatigue borne of his ride through pelting sleet and snow. “If them people can let Jesse Evans kill Tunstall, none of us is safe. You have to come.”
“But it’s Sunday, Billy. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
Billy heard Chisum’s cattle complaining outside about the snow falling on their backs and the sleet stinging their eyes.
“When Brady and Dolan send Jesse and the Boys to steal them steers and drive them down to S
even Rivers where they hide the cattle they rustle, you won’t have no money to keep this ranch, Patrick. Joining us will give you the guns you need to protect your Pa’s livestock. You need our guns; and we need yours. And Liam’s gun and the sergeant’s.”
“Where you going to meet? Can’t use Tunstall’s store if Brady has it locked down.”
“No. We’re meeting at McSween’s house next door. Brady ain’t locked down McSween’s place. And Mrs. McSween ain’t back yet.”
Patrick walked over to Liam. He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the wind.
“Liam? You interested?”
Liam glanced over to Cyrus who slowly shook his head as if he knew the answer.
“No. I ain’t lifting my iron against this town. Or against Sean, if he’s riding with the sheriff.”
“All right. Then you and Cyrus can stay here. I ain’t got no choice.” Patrick faced Billy at Liam’s side. “Let’s go up to the house and put some hot coffee in you. Then we’ll ride down to Lincoln.”
“Good. McSween will be glad to have you.”
“Maybe. But I ain’t raising my weapon against my brother.”
Billy showed his squirrel teeth. The nineteen-year-old clerk pushed back his long coat to reveal his handiron on his hip.
“Your brother don’t talk like he’s still your kin.”
BILLY AND PATRICK never spoke during their grueling ride back to Lincoln. They never looked up from under their hats for five miles. They kept their chins inside the collars of their coats to keep the sleet from cutting their faces. The horses obediently followed the wagon road into town without help from their motionless riders.
Patrick was surprised that the paddock surrounding McSween’s large adobe compound was full of horses. No one saw them ride past the Wortley on their left. McSween’s home was the next large structure on the same side of the street. The next building further down was Tunstall’s store where behind it, fresh snow covered the little mound of rocks piled over the dead Englishman’s body. At least a dozen horses stood rigidly in a row. They all faced away from the wind blowing hard out of the west.
Inside, a stone hearth warmed just over a dozen men. Cigar smoke swirled toward the ceiling. Patrick guessed who Alexander McSween was by his face. There were only three pink, smooth faces in the crowd and they were the only unarmed men present: Justice Wilson, the lawyer, and a stranger. McSween wore better clothes. All the other armed men wore cowpuncher uniforms of baggy trousers shining from wear inside the knees and sweat-faded shirts.
The Sons of Grady Rourke Page 12
