The Sons of Grady Rourke (28 page)

The man stood up, choking. The commotion stopped the chatter at nearby tables and everyone turned to the disturbance in the smoky saloon at midnight.

“Ain't nothing,” Jesse called across the cantina. “Just funning.”

Jesse had to push Sean down into his seat. The others stepped back to their places. The stunned shootist rubbed his neck and looked toward Sean. Sean's eyes were still white, but the man with finger-shaped welts on his throat did not look hostile.

“I didn't mean no harm, Sean. You know we'll help you bust her out. Right this minute, if you're willing. Ain't that right, Captain?”

The tone in his voice forced Sean to sit back and stop twitching. He looked across the room at the fire in the hearth.

“I'm sorry,” Sean said softly toward the fireplace. “It's just ...”

“We know, Sean,” Jesse said. “Jake's right: We need to talk about getting Melissa out of Lincoln before the judge comes up. Next week, maybe.”

Sean nodded without looking up. He had heard the William Wilson story told merrily over drinks at the Wortley cantina. In December of 1875, while Sean was panning for California gold, Wilson became Lincoln County's first judicial hanging. He was convicted of shooting Robert Casey, a House man, in August. When the sheriff dropped the trap door for the public execution, Wilson dangled for ten minutes. After the deputies cut him down and laid him out, he started breathing again. So they hoisted his semi-conscious body back up for another 20 minutes to get it right. The “double hanging” became saloon legend immediately.

“A breakout?” Sean asked as Jesse spit again.

Jesse Evans looked into Sean's tortured eyes. He spoke proudly.

“Ain't that what the Boys is for?”

The murders of Deputy Morton and Frank McNab flashed into Sean's mind and felt as hot as the red embers in the fire. He thought of his brother Liam who had lost his soul or his mind, according to Patrick. He thought of an unclean little man calling him self a doctor who now lay under the soil of his own paddock. And he thought of the look in Melissa's eyes when she saw Sean with Deputy Mathews and put her hand on her empty belly. Sean had last seen that expression at Shiloh, on men who were dying and knew it. He looked closely at Jesse Evans, murderer and cattle rustler.

“But I ain't one of your boys, Jesse.”

“Sheriff Brady paid you three dollars a week to be his deputy. Them dollars come from the House. That makes you one of us.”

The logic made Sean's skin crawl.

T
HE RAIN STAYED
long and spring came slowly to Lincoln County. By the end of May, the mile-high air was warm in daylight but cold at night. Drifts of old snow remained in the craggy shadows and on the north side of tree stands were the sun never penetrated. Cyrus taught Abigail how to cover their garden at night with old bed linen to keep frost from killing the fragile green shoots emerging from the moist earth. Born on an Arkansas plantation to slave parents, he knew planting.

Monday morning, May 27, Sean and Jesse Evans rode up the lane to the Rourke ranch. Bonita saw them coming and called the rest of the household.

Sean and Jesse dismounted and tied their horses. The fences were finished and John Chisum's steers were kept well away from the new garden and the house. Jesse suppressed a smile when he walked past the beef with the jingle-bobbed ears. He thought of piles of those ears buried down at Bob Beckwith's spread at Seven Rivers.

“You done good,” Sean said to Patrick as they walked toward the house.

“Cyrus is like hiring three good men,” the middle brother said warmly beside Sergeant Buchanan.

“Strong body; weak mind,” Cyrus grinned. Family life clearly agreed with him. The little girl still stayed close. She loved him and he had no rules but one: Abigail was never allowed to call him Uncle. His grandfather had been called that by two generations of white children whose parents owned him and had owned Cyrus as a child. So Abigail called him Cyrus as if he were another of her little friends in Lincoln.

Liam's hair was finally thick enough to cover his scalp scars. He had put on weight but still looked troubled. All trace of his youth was gone from his twenty-one-year-old face.

The five men sat at the table. Abigail sat on her big friend's lap. Bonita moved between the tiny kitchen and the table to set out midday supper. Patrick had been to town after Sean's last visit. But the brothers did not meet when Patrick shopped for pantry fare at Sue McSween's store. Patrick noticed that the rains had finally flattened the ground above John Tunstall behind the store. Only a plain wooden marker in the soft soil marked his place.

Sean wanted the child to be elsewhere. But she looked determined to remain perched on Cyrus' knee.

“Jesse and I are going to fetch Melissa tomorrow morning early.”

Abigail smiled and pulled on Cyrus' Army-blue shirt. He patted her head.

“How early?” Patrick asked. His eyes narrowed and he looked hard at Jesse.

“Before daybreak.”

“I see.”

“We thought you three might want to ride with us. There ain't but a handful of cavalry left in town.” Sean looked first at Patrick then Cyrus. It was too hard for him to look into Liam's empty eyes.

Cyrus glanced over the child toward Patrick, then at Bonita. The woman's eyes were worried eyes.

“When?” Patrick asked.

“After we finish.” Sean avoided Bonita's face when he looked at Patrick. “You rode with them Regulators. There are warrants out for all the Regulators, you know. It could be ugly if you're seen in Lincoln right now.”

“Don't matter.”

“Then let's eat,” Cyrus said.

Within half an hour, all of the plates were empty except Liam's. Abigail ate from Cyrus' plate.

When the table was cleared, Cyrus and Patrick put on their heavy gunbelts. Liam watched, said nothing, and walked slowly into the sunshine in the direction of the garden. Cyrus watched him leave before going into Bonita's bedroom. Jesse, Patrick, and Sean lingered at the table. Abigail sat smiling in Sergeant Buchanan's chair.

Bonita sat on the edge of the bed. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap.

“There'll be trouble,” she said softly so the child would not hear.

“Jesse's men will be there. I don't expect no trouble.” He stopped directly in front of her. “You keep an eye on Liam.”

Bonita looked up with moist eyes.

“He should go with you. His brother got Melissa into this.”

“It ain't his fight.”

“It ain't
your
fight.” A tear rolled down her left cheek.

“Liam can't fight no more.”

“But you're not a soldier anymore, Cyrus. You done your share. Liam should go instead of you. Abbey and I need you.” She wept freely.

“He can't. That's all there is to it.”

“Then tell me why. You said he went back for you in the battle last year. Why can't he go without you?”

Cyrus sighed. He owed her the story. He stepped to the door, closed it softly, and returned to sit beside Bonita. The tall man put a large hand on each of his knees and he spoke to the floor.

“Liam ran that last time. He couldn't fight no more. He seen too much killing. When we was attacked, he ran. He cut himself with a saber half a mile from the real fight and said he were wounded. It happened twice before, but that was the first time he had to hurt himself to stay out of it. When the others found him, they told him I was dead. That's why he went back. He didn't want them devils to cut me open like they done sometimes. The Sioux cut the
cahones
off our dead at Bighorn. That's why our boys in the Fourth under Mackensie went crazy at Red Fork in '76 against the Cheyenne. Liam just seen too much, Bonita.”

Bonita sniffed hard. Cyrus patted her knee and stood up.

“What I told you, no one knows but me and the boy.”

The woman nodded. Tears ran off her chin. Cyrus had to look away and walk quickly toward the door.

“Let's go,” Cyrus said to Jesse and the brothers.

“You'll bring Mama back, Cyrus.” Abigail spoke with certainty absolute.

“What about Liam?” Jesse asked. He looked through the open door to the garden where the youngest brother stood against the purple sky. His outline looked dark and sharp and as desolate as an old, bare tree standing alone under a gray, winter sky.

“He'll stay with the womenfolk.”

Cyrus touched Abigail's face as he walked into the May sunshine.

I
F A WOMAN COULD WALK, THE GUNFIGHTERS PRETENDING TO
be Texas Rangers ran her down like an animal and raped her face-down in the streets of El Paso. If a Mexican woman could not run, the posse took her where she dropped.

When the El Paso Salt War erupted in west Texas in the fall of 1877, a race war gripped the town. For eight generations, local Hispanics harvested and sold salt from El Paso's salt beds. The mineral was community property available for everyone. White businessmen then claimed the salt as private property. After El Paso's sheriff and two
Anglos
were killed, the new sheriff deputized John Kinney. a Mesilla Valley gunman. He hired thirty of his own kind to put down the protest by Hispanic citizens. The sheriff swore the gang in as Texas Rangers.

Ranger Kinney unleashed his Rangers on El Paso. In October, they gunned down nine Hispanic men and began a rape rampage of Hispanic women. Any woman captured was stripped in broad daylight and violated. The proud Rangers called their mob of animals in rut, the Rio Grande Posse. Five thousand citizens fled to Mexico in terror.

During the last week of May 1878, John Kinney shined his tin star and ordered the Rio Grande Posse to take horse.

“One riot; one Ranger,” John Kinney shouted as his men mounted in column of twos and rode north toward Lincoln County.

*         *         *

S
HERIFF
C
OPELAND'S OIL
lamp burned dimly in the courthouse window two hours into Tuesday, May 28th. A faintly yellow glow fell gently on water-filled hoof prints in the dirt street.

Sean, Cyrus, Jesse, and his Boys had been drinking lightly at the Wortley since an hour before midnight. On the same side of the street and five doors closer to the courthouse, Patrick looked out the window of the darkened Tunstall store. Patrick had gotten word to Billy Bonney at San Patricio to get word to Sue McSween to leave the back door open. She did, and Patrick stood inside a coal mine that smelled strongly of clove, turpentine, and molasses. He did not pace during his three-hour imprisonment to avoid knocking something over and calling attention to himself. The daytime cavalry sentries left behind by Colonel Dudley to keep the peace had retired to their tents erected behind the jail.

The cantina crowd had thinned out since midnight. But two dozen men still played cards and drank bad liquor. No one paid any attention to Jesse's company at their usual table at their usual hour.

By one o'clock in the morning, the men around the largest table at the Wortley's saloon stopped tipping whiskey and began to sip black coffee. Manuel, from the front desk, was doing the night-shift duties since both Bonita and Melissa were gone. The first round of bitter coffee did not impress him. But with the second, he looked into Jesse's eyes and out the dark window and back at Jesse. The out-of-work rustler looked away.

“Ain't no charge for the coffee,” the Mexican said softly, pouring the third round of coffee. “
Via con Dios, Capitan.”

Jesse Evans only nodded. He pulled a pocket watch from his vest, flicked the case open, and studied the face.

“Two-thirty,” Jesse said to Sean.

Sean turned to the only black man at the table who sat at his side.

“You still don't have to do this, Sergeant.”

The big man smiled and touched his handiron on his hip.

“All right then,” Jesse said. He pushed back from the table and the men around him stood up. When all ten walked into the smoky hallway, only Manuel watched them until the last one disappeared. Then he pulled back the curtain on the adobe wall and peeked into the pitch darkness.

Like one great shadow, the men kept close to the buildings on the north side of the street and walked toward the courthouse. They passed Sue McSween's home where oil lamps still burned. Jimmy Dolan's home across the street was dark. One door past McSween's, they paused in front of Tunstall's store and waited for Patrick who came out quickly. Sean took position at Patrick's side without a word. Cyrus walked on Patrick's other side. The three men led the way with Jesse behind Sean. The Boys walked behind Jesse in two ranks of three gunmen.

At the east end of Lincoln, the silent group paused in the darkness just outside the light cast by the courthouse window's lamp. An overcast sky kept the night close to the ground and the air was still, humid, and utterly silent.

Sean was surprised at how the moist air made cocking his Peacemaker sound like a dry twig snapping. Jesse gestured and Sean took five steps toward the courthouse door. His handiron hung at the end of his arm. Patrick and Cyrus pulled their weapons in one motion when the door opened and bathed everyone in ghostly light.

“Come on in, boys,” Sheriff Copeland said with stunning civility. He folded his arms so the party outside could see that his did not wear his gunbelt.

“Well, come on. The coffee's hot, but I ain't got enough cups, it looks like.”

Copeland stood out of way so Sean could enter behind his raised revolver. He looked behind the open door and surveyed the single-room structure. No other deputies hid in the shadows. Sean lowered his weapon but did not return it to leather. Jesse put his piece in his holster but he left it cocked.

Melissa sat on the side of a cot. The other cot in her cell was empty. Two other cells were also empty. The woman wore baggy trousers and a heavy cotton shirt. Her boots looked five sizes too big. The cell door was wide open and Melissa looked through the cage toward Sean.