And then Dick Brewer interfered by calmly walking between the two, saying, “We’ll just get our supplies and go.”
“Won’t be no sales today!” Jimmy Dolan cried out, but he lowered his Winchester. “We need to do an audit. Right, Sheriff?”
“Required by the writ of attachment,” Brady said.
“There’s nothing to be gained, hanging out here,” Waite said and headed outside, his spurs jangling. The Kid and Tunstall and finally Brewer followed.
Murphy lifted his quart of Double Anchor and called out in farewell, “Leprechauns, castles, good luck, and laughter! Lullabies, dreams, and love ever after!”
And Dolan ran to the front door to shout after them, “I’ll get ye yet, Englishman! And take heed of this: When ye write the Independent again, say I’m with the Boys!”
The Kid’s hand went to his gun as he turned to face Jimmy Dolan, but Tunstall halted him and calmly said, “It’s just a kerfuffle, Billy. We’ll sort things out.”
- 8 -
AFFRAY ON THE HAM MILLS TRAIL
Walking through the McSween residence with their house servant, a former slave who’d taken the name George Washington, Sheriff Brady noted things like “one parlor organ,” “a lot of sheet music,” “one wash bowl & pitcher,” “one sewing machine.” In Alex’s office he’d counted “550 law books.” Washington was outraged as he watched the sheriff hold up and inspect Mrs. Susan McSween’s intimate things in a chiffonier’s drawer, and he reported the violation to his employer. In retaliation, Alexander McSween wrote a letter on February 11 to Carl Schurz, the secretary of the interior, accusing the new Jas. J. Dolan & Co. and the federal agent to the Mescalero Apaches of conniving to furnish unhealthy stolen cattle and flour of foul mashed wheat and corn to the Indians of the reservation. “I suggest that you send a Detective here who will ferret this matter,” wrote McSween. “A thorough search will disclose fearful villainy on the part of all concerned.”
In a postscript he nominated “Robt. A. Widenmann of this place” to be the next Indian agent, not just because Widenmann was a friend of himself and John Tunstall but because Widenmann’s father was an immigrant from Württemberg, Germany, just as Carl Schurz had been. He harbored the hope that they maybe knew each other.
Jimmy Dolan was the postmaster of Lincoln village, so Alex McSween took his letter nine miles southwest to Fort Stanton for mailing.
Meanwhile, Colonel William L. Rynerson, the presiding attorney for the Third Judicial District, was writing Jimmy Dolan, “It must be made too hot for Tunstall and his friends, the hotter the better, shake that outfit up till it shells out and squares up and then shake it out of Lincoln. Get the people with you, have good men about to aid Sheriff Brady, and be assured I will aid you all I can.”
The next week was filled with threats and caterwauling and whose-was-which jockeying over horses and cattle, but the upshot was that gun portholes were drilled in John Tunstall’s Los Feliz shack, the front patio and entrance were fortified like a stockade with heaps of sand-filled gunnysacks, and Gottfried Gauss, a Santa Claus of an old chuck wagon cook, took up habitation inside to oversee the cattle and property. And on the cold morning of February 18, 1878, with the instruction that Tunstall would “countenance no violence,” a cavalcade left the Los Feliz ranch for the Lincoln plaza with six horses and two mules released from attachment by Sheriff Brady and which Tunstall intended to corral behind his merchandise store.
Fred Waite handled a buckboard to stock up on groceries in the village, and when the shortcut along the hilly Ham Mills trail got too rutted for apt-to-crack wooden spokes, Waite veered off toward the flatlands of the Wagon trail. Continuing on with Tunstall on horseback were just Dick Brewer, Robert Widenmann, William H. Bonney, and John Middleton, a heavyset horse thief of twenty-four who was wanted for killing a man in Texas.
Kid Bonney trotted a gray and spotted Appaloosa horse that was on loan to him and got up alongside Tunstall and his handsome but blind bay thoroughbred, Colonel. Looking to Billy, the Englishman said, “A splendid equine, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Without question,” Billy said.
“I have taught Colonel to high-step when the road gets choppy so his fetlocks aren’t injured. And he’ll prepare for changes of grade, up or down, just with my cautioning. Without any urging, he can walk twenty-five miles in five hours and a half. And he comes when I call him and follows me around as if he could see.”
“Wish envy was a more honorable emotion.”
Tunstall smiled. “I do hope I get to know you better, Kid Bonney. You have a certain élan, a je ne sais quoi that I find delightful.”
“Well, I recognize that last word. Thank you.”
Watching his forward cowhands rock in their saddles, Tunstall fondly said, “I feel the same way about Dick Brewer and Rob Widenmann. Rob takes as much care of me when I’m ill as if I were a fainting dowager. I get impatient with his coddling and once fetched my bulldog to snarl him away, but for generosity, courage, and the general manly virtues, Rob is truly a cracking good fellow.”
“Wasn’t aware you were sick,” the Kid said.
“Oh, it’s just rheumatism and too little sleep. Actually, I’m still very much below par, but I imagine I shall find my pins again by the time the buffalo grass greens up. In the meantime I have so many plans. Shall I tell you?”
His face gleamed with such childish exultation and fanciful sparkle that it felt a little like flirting. “Sure, Harry. Tell,” the Kid said.
“Well, betwixt you and me, there is a ranch adjoining mine that I want very badly. It could be got for only six hundred pounds and I believe I could reap over three hundred per annum. I am more convinced every day that land here is as fine an investment as one of my father’s merchant ships.”
“Like to get myself some cattle property one day. Fred Waite and I have a notion to partner on a ranch soon’s we get some cash.”
“Oh do it, Kid. Put down roots. I’ll help you.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
His employer’s stare then went to the horizon as he ruminated in silence. The Kid could hear the shrill cowboy whistles far ahead as Widenmann and Brewer collected the troop of delinquent horses and mules whenever they threatened to wander. The frozen fescue grass crackled under the hooves of the Kid’s horse. His Colorado saddle