The Sons of Grady Rourke (3 page)

The ceiling was not flat. It was gabled down the center of the room and housed a single loft above a wooden ladder. From below, several travel trunks were visible, aligned neatly like small wooden coffins awaiting their final resting place in the frozen earth.

A single doorway opened along the long wall. Bright sunlight shone upon rusty hinges on the half-open door. Inside, a small bedroom contained a single bed, which stood high off the dusty floor. At the narrow end of the living room was a tiny kitchen with closed cupboards, a dry sink, and a large pump with a wooden handle. Walking closer, Patrick saw open tin cans with jagged tops pointing toward the rough hewn ceiling; it was as if the owner had started dinner but had not had time to finish preparing it. Looking down, Patrick saw that each can was still full of something frozen and unidentifiable. Whatever it once had been, it had half rotted during the fall before freezing in the high-country winter.

Stepping back into the harsh daylight of the living room, Patrick came closer to his brother's side. Sean frowned down at a waist-high bureau against a wall. On top, wooden picture frames sat in puddles of melted snow. The melt water ran brown with dust and grime. The frames will filled with browned portraits of dour faces—painfully rigid from holding their breath for the long exposures of the photographic processes common to the West.

“I remember that one,” Patrick smiled at a portrait of three scruffy little boys.

“We don't look real happy,” Sean said without emotion.

“Except for Liam.”

The youngest child—no more than five years old—wore the smudged mouth of a boy who could not hold still while the plate was exposed.

“Liam always took Ma to heart,” Patrick said warmly.

“‘God sees smiles,'” Sean said softly as if reciting something important learned at school.

“You remember Ma saying that to us?” Patrick sounded surprised.

Sean's broken face smiled awkwardly. He seemed out of practice.

“I knowed her before you did, little brother.”

Patrick gently touched his tall brother's shoulder and looked down quickly before his eyes showed wet.

“Pa.” The smaller brother studied a stem face with hollow cheeks and a double row of brass buttons running down the puffed-out breast.

“I remember his uniform from Mexico. He was proud of it.” Sean did not seem to notice that the frame held two portraits in the glass. The second showed a man in a Confederate uniform with corporals' stripes. The beardless face was untouched by the ravages of war.

“Pa must have put you in the frame with his picture.”

“Or Ma did.”

“Don't matter who, does it?” Patrick stopped short, wishing that he had not spoken quite so quickly.

“Don't matter at all,” Sean said as he laid the double frame into the last of the snow melting on the little bureau. He turned when he heard cattle hooves on the front porch. “Think I'll go outside and make some fresh beef for dinner. Why don't you broom out the kitchen?”

“All right.”

“Tomorrow, we'll ride to town to find Lawyer McSween what wrote us to come for probating Pa's will.” Sean heaved his soggy coat over his shoulders. He paused to examine the cylinder of his Peacemaker revolver. He knew that its six chambers were loaded. But he checked anyway as he walked quietly into the blinding sunshine.

Inside, Patrick Rourke heard his brother's spurs jingling on the porch followed by the clatter of cattle feet. He knew that Sean would guide one of the steers toward the barn before putting it down. While he waited for the single report from a .45-30 cartridge, Patrick picked up his father's framed face and gently wiped snow melt from the knotty wood. He studied Grady Rourke's clear, pale eyes, which stared straight ahead. Patrick blinked as if his father's youthful eyes were watching him. Then he looked at his brother's face from sixteen years earlier. Sean's eyes were slightly pursed at the bridge of his nose. It was a teenage warrior's face that seemed grimly aware of its certain future.

Patrick did not startle when a single pistol shot cracked outside. From inside the barn, the thin mountain air muffled the round into a faraway pop like dry kindling under foot. He set the double frame back where it belonged.

“We come home, Pa.”

T
HE
R
OURKE BROTHERS RODE INTO
L
INCOLN FROM THE WEST
. Their steak dinner and their steak breakfast did not keep them warm during the short ride to town. Scarves of coarse wool held their sweat-stained hats down over their ears. Riding with their heads down against the wind, the Rourkes had to squint their eyes within the shadows cast by the hats' wide felt brims. An all-night feast of clean hay and rolled oats found in the barn put the light back into the black eyes of each rider's horse. Oats burn slowly inside a horse, and each animal carried his feet high as their warm bellies and thick winter coats kept the mounts comfortable under the bright midmorning sun. The men felt the confidence of their heavy Colt Peacemakers rubbing against their hips beneath their fur trail dusters. The sun glinted off the riders' spurs.

Riding slowly eastward, the brothers followed Lincoln's only dirt road. The hamlet was nothing more than a single row of wind-burned and sun-bleached adobe structures on each side of the street, 5750 feet above sea level. Behind the single-story buildings on their left, the frozen Rio Bonito river bed ran east and west, parallel with the street. Its near bank was hardly twenty yards from the rear of the ragged buildings on the north side of the road.

They passed the town's only two-story building on their right. Men already bustled in and out of the prosperous mercantile. The sign said J. J. D
OLAN AND
C
OMPANY
. Ten yards further into town stood a single-story adobe building on their left, opposite the Dolan store. To the right of the building, a large corral was empty of livestock.

“Let's try the store, Patrick.”

Without comment, the younger brother steered his mount toward Dolan's hitching rail. They dismounted and went inside.

Half a dozen men stopped chattering when the brothers entered. The travelers' beards, trail coats bulging at the right hip, and their general disrepair called the patrons' attention to the strangers. The brothers unwrapped the scarves covering their heads and removed their hats. They walked on stiff legs toward a ratty bar along one wall.

“A little early in the day for hard liquor, boys,” a friendly man said behind the bar. His pot belly was stained with tobacco juice. “Coffee's strong and hot, if you have a mind.”

“Coffee would be just fine,” Sean said. His left hand reached across his chin to pull the right fur collar of his coat high up on his disfigured face.

“Here you go,” the barkeep smiled. If he noticed Sean's face, he did not even blink.

“Thanks.”

“You boys passing through?”

“No, sir. We live here. Leastwise our folks done for years.”

“Oh?”

“We're Rourkes. I'm Sean and this here is my little brother, Patrick.”

The barkeep squinted in the bright sunlight streaming harshly through wavy windows. He studied Sean closely.

“I'll be damned. Old Grady's boys come home? Yes, I can see it now. Around your eyes. Just come in?”

“Yesterday. Ain't had time for a bath or shave yet.”

“Guess not. Sorry to hear about your pa. He had friends here in Lincoln.”

“Yes,” Sean nodded, lifting a heavy coffee cup to his beard. “Lincoln. When did it get a new name?”

“Back in '69, I suppose. When we finally got a Post Office. Old-timers like me still call it La Placita del Rio Bonito.” Though blond and blue-eyed, the barkeep's Spanish accent was perfect from a lifetime in New Mexico Territory, where native Mexicans and Mescalaro Apaches still outnumbered the
Anglos
.

“We're looking for a lawyer, Alexander McSween. Know where we can find him?”

“Jail more 'n likely,” someone behind the brothers piped up.

The brothers turned toward the man behind them: another
Anglo
, middle-aged, with a frightened, hungry look in his eyes.

“Jail?”

“Yes. McSween's under arrest for stealing from old Fritz's estate. Got took to Mesilla to tell it to the judge down there.”

“Emil Fritz,” another man joined in. “Used to be one of the owners of Dolan and Company. Consumption killed him when he went home to Germany a while back. Old McSween had his dirty little hand in the cookie jar.” A gathering of townsmen laughed together around the brothers, who were suddenly uncomfortable with so many strangers blowing tobacco breath down their necks.

“McSween has papers for us,” Sean said firmly, hoping to bring the conversation to a quick resolution.

“See the Wortley 'cross the street?” The barkeep pointed out the front window toward Lincoln's only boarding house and hotel. The brothers squinted toward the snow-covered street and nodded. “Well, ride past it, and past the Mills' house. The fenced-in building on the left will be McSween's house. No one's home now.” The cluster of men chuckled. “His law office is next door in Tunstall's store.” The man said Tunstall as if the word had a bad taste.

The brothers laid their empty cups down on the bar.

“Thanks for the coffee. What do we owe you?”

The barkeep smiled with strained courtesy.

“Nothing this morning, boys. It's on old Grady. Ask for Shield. He's McSween's partner.”

“Shield,” Patrick repeated.

“McSween's wife is Mrs. Shield's sister,” one of the nameless men offered.

“Thanks, again,” Sean said as he walked an anxious step ahead of Patrick into the sunshine. They mounted, crossed the street toward the Wortley Hotel, and continued slowly past an apparently deserted adobe structure surrounded by a fence. The place looked like a small fortress. Within minutes, they reached the second large building on the river side of the street. Its front porch ended at the street. The entire rear of the building was a corral, where a lone horse stood quietly, fetlock-deep in new snow. The brothers tied their animals to two of the beams that held up the porch roof. They entered the single-story building. A young, thin-faced boy with pale blue eyes stood behind a counter.

“Is this the Tunstall store?”

“Yes, mister. Can I help you?”

“We're looking for a Mister Shield. Supposed to be a lawyer.”

“He's in the back. I'll fetch him. Who shall I tell him?”

“We're Rourkes.”

The young man nodded as if his early morning customers were expected.

“What about you?” Patrick said toward the clerk's thin back.

The boy stopped, turned and grinned. “William Bonney.” He waited with a look of cheerful anticipation on his clean-shaven face. For a moment, he studied each brother's blue-gray eyes.

“Mr. Shield, please,” Sean said impatiently.

When the clerk continued on his way, he looked disappointed and continued to watch the brothers over his shoulder until he disappeared into an open room. He quickly returned with a tall, well-dressed man behind him.

“I'm David P. Shield. May I be of service?”

The boy returned to his post behind the counter.

Sean and Patrick removed their hats.

“I'm Sean Rourke. And my brother, Patrick.”

“Grady's sons?”

“Yes, sir. Come to see Mr. McSween. His letter three months ago is what brung us home.”

“Yes. Of course. We were sorry to hear about old Grady. Won't you come back, please?”

The dapper, middle-aged gentleman with a handlebar mustache led the brothers through the rear of the Tunstall store. He stopped at a small cubicle and gestured for his guests to enter first. The brothers took seats close to the adobe wall and their host settled into a wicker chair on castors close to a rolltop desk.

“I'm Alex McSween's partner and a lawyer. We all felt bad about Grady's accident. Didn't find his body for a week. His friends buried him behind the house, beside your Ma and their babies.” The lawyer nodded gravely. “Your father's will is in our files and I am authorized to share it with you in my partner's absence.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “I have to report that Alex was called away on legal business to Mesilla. I don't expect him back for several weeks.”

“We heard he was in some kind of trouble.” Sean was already out of patience and it was not yet ten o'clock.

“So he is,” Mr. Shield nodded with discomfort in his calm voice. “Trumped up charges of abusing an estate in his care. Dolan's people and the House are behind it.”

“Oh. Who's Mr. Tunstall what owns this store?”

“I can tell, Sean, that you don't dance around the issues. I like that in a man.” The lawyer reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a wooden box. “Cigars, gentlemen?”

Sean reached into the open box held open in front of him. Patrick waved it past. The lawyer took a cigar and returned the box to his drawer. He struck a match on the bottom of his boot and offered the fire to Sean.

“No need, sir.” Sean bit off two inches of cigar and began slowly chewing it. Shield smiled and brought the flame up to his own cigar.

“As I was saying, how long has it been since you boys were home in Lincoln?”

“Five, maybe six years,” Sean said with his lips barely opening. Shield handed his guest a brass spittoon. Sean nodded and used it.

“That's long enough to be out of touch with Lincoln affairs and all of the players. Do you want to get to your father's papers first, or get reacquainted with local politics?”

The brothers glanced at each other. In the brief silence, Shield took a drag on his cigar and spoke first.

“You planning to stay here? Maybe work your father's ranch?”

“I suppose,” Sean said before spitting again.