The Sons of Grady Rourke (14 page)

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.

Rev. Dr. Ealy read the Protestant graveside service while the Irishmen of the House looked on from under their wide brims. Mary Ealy's strong voice led the citizens of Lincoln in a hymn of mourning for the foreigner in their midst who did not know enough not to draw on a duly constituted posse. Jesse Evans and the Boys sang behind her like a dirty-faced heavenly chorus.

And above it all rang the clear tenor voice of Billy Bonney who loved to sing at church on Sunday mornings in the hard town of Lincoln, once known as La Placita del Rio Bonito.

While the mainly Catholic and Irish House prayed across from the mainly Protestant Tunstall-McSween store, the two brothers Rourke looked at each other over the open hole in the rocky sod. Each man waited for the other to blink and look away. Neither did. Sean wondered why his brother's eyes were so full of anguish. Each had been in the enemy's camp for little more than one month—hardly time to form bonds worthy of much grieving. When Patrick's gaze drifted down toward Melissa's eyes the color of the bright, mountain sky, only then did Patrick blink and look down at the clods of frozen mud soon to fall upon John Tunstall.

The voices raised on the banks of the Rio Bonito carried into the white hills above the hamlet. It echoed through the barren rocks and around smooth hills until snow-heavy trees smothered it into just another gentle breath of pine scented wind.

“M
AYBE A WEDDING
? Can't be church, can it?”

“I didn't think it was Sunday. Must be we lost count.”

“Must be,” the large black man nodded. “Sure it's Lincoln?”

“Sure only of that much,” the thin white man smiled. “It's the day of the week I ain't swearing to.”

Both men chuckled and spurred their horses through the little hills close to town. Their long, wool coats were blue. Blue trousers with a gold stripe on the outside of each leg were pushed down into knee-high cavalry boots. Each rider rode easily in his deep-seated McClellan saddle.

“Main road should be 'round them trees,” the white man pointed. The older, black man followed silently between the hills.

The lead rider looked young with gray eyes, rosy cheeks and a red try-hard beard. His whiskers were thin and unconvincing. His narrow shoulders made him look like a boy ahead of the massive man close behind. The older man's face was clean-shaven except for a gray mustache. The road opened before them after an hour.

“There. Only another two miles west, Cyrus.”

“Good eye.”

“Could do it blind from here,” the young man said cheerfully.

In the thin air, the two riders did not hear hoofbeats behind them until the lone horseman was nearly beside them. All three men reined in their mounts and squinted at each other beneath the high sun.

When Patrick Rourke exhaled at the two men in blue, his face was obscured by a veil of steam. His pale eyes were wide.

“Liam.”

“Patrick? What's that on your face?” The pink-faced boy smiled warmly.

“A damn better beard than you sprouted, little brother.”

Liam Rourke stroked his chin with his gloved hand. His cavalry gauntlet reached to the elbow of his govemment-issue greatcoat. Then he reached over to grab his brother's open hand.

Patrick looked across to the black man who appeared to be twenty years older than the youngest Rourke.

“This here is Cyrus Buchanan. He and I rode together on the trail of Chief Joseph. He's my friend.”

Patrick's tired eyes nodded civilly toward the black man. The brother leaned over his horse's ears and extended a gloved hand. “Patrick Rourke, Sergeant Buchanan.”

Cyrus took the hand into his yellow gauntlet.

“Patrick.”

The middle brother eyed the blue uniforms, greatcoats, and military saddles.

“You mustered out yet?”

“Six weeks ago,” Liam said, blowing steam toward Patrick. “They give us the clothes and tack 'cause it being hard winter still on the Canadian border. Got our civvies in the saddlebags. No use wearing out the knees in our own pants across seven hundred miles of open country.”

“Guess not,” Patrick said.

“Did Sean get the lawyer's letter and come home yet?” Liam sounded anxious to count heads.

“In town. We rode in together six or seven weeks ago.” Patrick shrugged toward the east where the narrow road disappeared into a crease between gentle hills.

“And you?”

“Moved into Pa's.”

Without asking about the soldiers' plans, Patrick smiled at his brother and reined his damp horse toward the west. As if answering the unspoken invitation, the men in blue fell into position on either side of Patrick. Riding silently while the sun dipped toward the southwest, Patrick occasionally glanced sideways just to assure himself that his long lost brother was really at his side and not a mean snow mirage.

B
ONITA
R
AMOS HAD
never seen the new deputy up close. She pretended not to notice his disfigured cheek. But Sean could feel the warmth of her gaze on the purple side of his face. He had wondered how the dark-faced woman in her middle thirties could regard herself as Melissa's friend when they could never have shared a single conversation. Sean reminded himself that he was again at the mute woman's table for his evening meal in her tiny home and that she had never uttered a word toward him either.

“Reverend Ealy planted the Englishman real pretty,” Bonita said with little trace of Spanish in her accent. Her
Anglo
mother had seen to that before her Mexican father sent the white woman away twenty years ago.

“It was done proper,” Sean said through the beans in his mouth.

“Why did Mr. Tunstall try to shoot Mr. Evans?” Abigail asked. Before Sean could swallow his food, he saw Melissa touch the little girl's hand and gesture toward her plate. “I just wondered, Mama.”

Melissa tapped the plate again and Abigail looked disappointed as she studied the mule stew.

“Guess he didn't know no better,” Sean volunteered. Pretending it was the beans that made him choke on his words, he reached quickly for his coffee cup.

“But he lived here almost long enough to be American,” Abigail argued softly. “He seemed like a nice man—for someone what didn't do business with Mr. Dolan.”

Sean shoveled some beans and chewed very slowly.

There was no more chatter until Bonita excused herself and walked out into the chilly night. Sean lingered behind. Abigail hugged him and climbed the ladder to the loft.

Melissa sat near the stove, beside Sean who took a pipe from his pocket. He struck a match on the side of the stove and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. The silent woman watched his face. She sat on his left so he looked like any other man with a full beard ending beneath his gray eyes.

The woman watched him smoke peacefully. She could see that a hearty dinner, Bonita's lively talk, and a quiet pipe did not lighten the weight which he seemed to carry on his furrowed brow. When Abigail blew out the single lantern in the loft, only the red light flickering inside the stove's open door illuminated the couple's faces. An oil lamp on the dinner table was damped low and sputtered yellow.

Sean smoked for half an hour without words. Then he tapped his pipe on the side of the stove and looked hard into Melissa's beautiful eyes.

“Morton killed Tunstall in cold blood. Then Jesse killed him again. Just like that.”

The part-time deputy sighed deeply, stood up, and touched Melissa's face before she had time to rise. His rough hand lay for an instant on her cheek with a touch as gentle as her mother's.

Stunned by the grief in the tall man's face, Melissa stayed seated until Sean reached for his hat and trail coat that hung from a peg beside the door. When Sean touched the heavy door, the woman stood, picked up the lamp, and walked slowly toward his side. She looked up into the good side of his face. Sean noticed for three weeks that she had a way of focusing only on the undamaged side as if the purple cheek were not there at all. She came close until he could feel her warm breath on his beard.

With Abigail sleeping in the loft, Melissa Bryant laid her hand upon Sean's, still gripping the cross-bar securing the door. She pulled his hand down to his side and lifted the lamp's glass toward her mouth. Melissa blew the lamp out. Then she reached up and removed Sean's hat.

*         *         *

A
FTER FIVE EXHAUSTING
days since Tunstall's murder, Patrick struggled to keep his eyes open. Liam and Cyrus continued to talk cheerlully as they passed a jug of sour mash whiskey between them. A fire roared in the hearth at one end of the large room of Grady Rourke's house.

At two in the morning, Patrick was fading fast. He turned to Liam.

“You're welcome to Pa's bed,” Patrick said when he could sit up no longer, even without a drop of whiskey. “It'll feel good after sleeping on the ground for a month. Cyrus, you can bunk out here and I'll take the loft so you boys can talk all night if you want.”

“I don't want to be no trouble, Patrick. I can sleep in the barn.” The big man with sergeants' stripes on his sleeve looked at the two white brothers.

“My brother's friends stay in the house,” Patrick said firmly enough to end the discussion.

“Thank you.”

“Ain't nothing.”

Patrick stood up with all of the energy he had left. He stumbled on the wooden ladder halfway up. The two retired soldiers heard snoring quickly reverberating from the ceiling beams. They never heard Patrick's boots bounce onto the floor.

“Is the house the way you remembered it?” Cyrus spoke over the mouth of a clay jug.

“Smaller, I suppose. But I ain't seen it in five years.” He reached for the jug and took a swig without wiping the lip first.

“What do you make of your older brother riding with the men what killed that Englishman?”

“I don't know what to make of it. I ain't seen Sean since he went west in '68. I couldn't have been more than ten or eleven when he left. I don't know if I would recognize him if he walked through that door.” Liam nodded toward the closed door beside the curtain full of night chill at the broken window. “But Patrick says it's so. He was part of that posse even if he didn't shoot him himself.”

Cyrus shook his head and reached for the jug.

“It would seem, Private Rourke, that we rode into a hornets' nest.” The middle-aged soldier was starting to slur his words. He squinted at Liam through the whiskey fog.

“We been through worse,” the youngest Rourke said grimly.

Cyrus had the jug half way to his mouth. He stopped short and lowered the jug into his lap. His broad face frowned as memories erupted inside his whiskey-muddled mind. He looked up toward the billowed curtain where the night wind howled over John Chisum's cattle. Cyrus Buchanan listened as if the wailing outside sounded familiar.

“Yes,” the older man said softly. “We seen worse.”

S
ATURDAY THE
23
RD
, Alexander McSween awoke early and stood on the windswept porch at South Spring River Ranch when John Chisum rode up from inspecting his fence lines. The cattleman had been in the saddle since well before daylight.

“You're up early, Alex.”

The lawyer watched Chisum dismount with the spry step of a cowhand half his age. Only his square face creased like an old cowboy's.

“I am. But John won't be. Can't stop thinking about him.”

Chisum wrapped his reins around one of the vertical timbers holding up the porch roof. He removed his hat and wiped a handkerchief around the inside crown. Though the morning air was crisp, Chisum had broken a sweat during two hours of trotting.

“Yes, Alex. The report the men brought from town sure don't sit easy: young John drawing on a dozen armed ruffians like Jesse Evans and his kind. Don't make sense.”

“They murdered him. You know that.” The lawyer spoke with anger. Tunstall was a business partner, but McSween had grown to like him in the sixteen months since their first meeting in Santa Fe at the Herlow Hotel. The lawyer never got rich off the Englishman after convincing him to settle in Lincoln County. Tunstall paid him for his counsel by crediting him with shares of the general store ownership. The shares were to equal half of the business by May—by which time Tunstall will have been three months in the ground. McSween had always smiled when Tunstall would launch into one of his soliloquies about America where a man was limited only by the size of his dreams.