The Sons of Grady Rourke (25 page)

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.

T
HE 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.

“S
ONSABITCHES
!” J
IMMY
D
OLAN
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 damned 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.”

S
ATURDAY 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.

“Hansen!”

Sean jumped out of bed and threw the blanket out of his way at the door.

“Hansen!”

“What?” The man on the floor rolled over and belched.

“Wake up, damn you.” Sean shook the sleeping man. He could hear the cot in the back creaking as Melissa shivered.

“What the hell?” Hansen opened his eyes and labored to focus in the grayness. “What do you want?”

“Melissa is sick. Real sick.” Sean was panting almost as fast as the woman.

“All right, all right.” Hansen sat up and rubbed his eyes. When he stood up, he passed gas like an old cow. “Let's have a look.”

Sean put a hand on the man's wet shoulder.

“Let me cover her first.”

Hansen blinked and looked up at the tall, frightened man. A genuine smile crossed his face, which softened in the half light. He touched Sean's arm.

“My boy, I'm a physician. I've put my fingers in white ones, black ones, Indians, and Mex ones where their husbands ain't even poked. Let's have a look.”

The sudden expression of compassion on the stinking man's face made Sean release his tight grip.

“That's better. Bring the lamp.”

Sean carried an oil lamp and followed Hansen into the room.

The round man laid his palm on Melissa's face. He gently pushed her over onto her back. He placed his hand on her bare abdomen below her navel and pressed gently. The woman exhaled hard with a little yelp. Then he pushed her smooth thighs apart and lowered the lighted lamp. When Hansen put his dirty hand between her legs, Sean grimaced at the semi-conscious woman's violation. The physician sniffed his fingers for only an instant.

“Ain't no discharge yet. Probably by tomorrow. Sponge her down from the basin and keep a blanket on her. Her body temperature will be low for a few days. Very dangerous, but she's young and strong.” He raised the lamp and saw pained outrage in Sean's scarred face. “I was a surgeon in the war. I've seen it all and smelled it all.” He shrugged. “Human women, birthing cows, ovulating mares: they're all the same to me. I've had my hand in them all, up to the elbow sometimes. I don't see their sex, Sean.” His sunbaked and malignant face looked strangely comforting. “Just keep her warm.”

Hansen shuffled out into the main room and Sean bent over Melissa who had drawn her legs up to her breasts. She cried softly with her eyes closed. Sean took a rag from the basin and began to wash her trembling back.

The physician returned with a bottle of clear liquid.

“This is mineral oil. Force-feed her as much as she'll keep down. Make sure she's awake so you don't choke her. The oil will coat her stomach and bowels so she don't spit up her mucous membranes.”

Sean looked sickened when he took the heavy bottle. He nodded and Hansen went outside to the privy.

For three days, Hansen had graciously fed Melissa tortillas made from a special tin of corn flour. The men ate from another tin.

The physician had laced Melissa's corn flour with the very bottoms of corn stalks grown in a large garden beside the paddock last summer. Corn grown in the blistering New Mexico sun has high concentrations of nitrate in the lower stalk. In Melissa's beans, he had added finely chopped rye grass and lamb's-quarters leaves from a patch of sweet soil in a low area where sparse rain collects in the spring. Fastgrowing rye and the weed concentrate nitrate.

Toxic levels of nitrates can kill livestock. The most common symptom of nitrate poisoning in the barnyard is miscarriage of calves and foals in the spring. Hansen carefully measured the dose to be strong enough to pass through Melissa's placenta, but not powerful enough to kill her.