Ever since the day when the boy I was back in the 1950's read Stuart N. Lake's admittedly overblown biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal I've wanted to write my own version of this almost Shakespearean tragedy. There hasn't been a year since when I haven't mulled over what such a book might be, and how I might approach it. I've kept current with the new research that turns up from time to time as other writers who've come to share my obsession have delved into the records and made new discoveries and come to varying conclusions about why so much blood was shed in that remote spot in the early 1880's, and who was to blame.
Back in the 1990's I actually completed a bloated nine-hundred-odd-page novel about Wyatt and his Tombstone troubles, trying to place him and his enemies in a realistic light and somehow find a fresh way of telling the tale that would somehow be distinguishable from the many other versions found on film and in books. Lately I've decided to try trimming and revising that novel, which has lain untouched now for many years. But the size of the job is somewhat frightening, for my version of the story is complex and is related from many different points of view--those of Earp's family, friends and foes.
This of course meant that some of the voices in the novel would be those of Wyatt's enemies, variously known as The Rustlers or The Cowboys, the outlaws against whom he and his brothers and their friend Doc Holliday battled. Just to fly in the face of convention I decided to start the novel with a chapter relating the viewpoint of the man most authorities believe was the chief outlaw in that time and place, a man known as Curly Bill Brocius.
Having posted on this blog off and on for some years now, I thought it would be useful to ask my readers whether they think I should pursue this massive endeavor. In order to render an opinion, of course, readers must have some evidence to go on. So I've decided to append to this blog the text of the first chapter of the novel I call Riding The Hearse. (That term comes from the old frontier gambling game of faro, which Wyatt practiced and which was so perilous that a person called a lookout was required to sit in a chair near the faro layout with a double-barreled shotgun to deal with sore losers. A case-keeper was also needed, who kept track of which cards had been played by means of beaded contraption resembling an abacus. "Keeping cases" was also called "riding the hearse.")
I would be most grateful if some of you would read this chapter, which is below, and e-mail me whether you feel this is a project that is worthy of completion. I will be guided, in large part, by what you say. My e-mail address is charlesfprice@aol.com.
Oh, a couple of clarifications about references in the text: First, a "Cousin Jack" was a Cornishman; there were many working the Southwestern mines. The "Cherry-Cows" was an Americanized pronounciation for the Chiricahua Mountain Range. And the character called "John R' is John Peters Ringo, who along with Brocius was supposed to have been one of the leaders of the rustler gang. The "Old Man' is Newman H. Clanton, chief of another faction of the rustling combine in those parts.
CHAPTER ONE
Ambling
his new paint filly down the Río San Pedro on a bright but blustery All Fool’s
Day, Brocius began to hear a rhythmic thumping in the distance. After a moment he knew it for the familiar racket of a
stamp mill. He shortened his reins and
checked the little pony and sat with his forearms crossed on the flat-topped
horn of his Mex saddle, shoulders rounded in a slump, listening to the grating
rumble of the big steam-driven rock-crushers.
He spat sideways. April Fool, he thought bitterly.
He
cocked his head and listened, trying to place it. A few miles back, he’d cut west from the
river to skirt the worst of its breaks and high banks. Just now he was on the lip of a cutbank with higher
brush-covered ground lifting to his right, the bed of the river lying just beyond
that eastern rise. It was hard to judge the source of the racket but it sounded as if it were coming from beyond the river and raising echoes off the buildings in Charleston, whose dun-colored abobe walls stood to the north and west of him in a low and broken line. He swore. Since he was
last in the valley some damned smelting outfit had opened an ore mill on the
river over there. Its pulse
hammered at him; the long western slant of the valley caught that ruction and
hollowly repeated it, a beat or two behind the echo that Charleston too was sending out.
He
gave his head a scornful shake. His
mouth hardened; the pitted skin of his face drew tight over his
cheekbones. It scarcely seemed possible
that so much change—something so big and able to make such a commotion—could
have come about so quickly, during the few short weeks he'd been Below. But it had.
The mill had come. The knowledge
sent a hot rage tumbling through him.
He preferred the country steeped in nature’s true quiet. Yet more and more all a man could hear was
the clang and roar of machinery. “Shit,”
he said aloud.The wind might have been vexed too, the way it buffeted him, tugged at the brim of his hat and at the skirts of his coat, uncoiled and coiled again the tails of the bandanna knotted loosely about his neck. The pony shifted under him as he grimly pondered. After a time he stirred and touched her with his spurs and they moved on. Idly he turned in his saddle and swept his gaze across the great tawny front of the Huachucas twelve miles to his southwest, mottled now with blue patches of cloud shadow that moved slowly over the the crumpled face of the range. The highest summits still wore white cowls of snow. A broad sweep of grassland ran north from its foot till the cinder-gray pile of the Mustang Mountainss closed that off; and beyond the Mustangs rose the taller peaks of the Whetstones, a row of rough-hewn pyramids showing a royal purple in the sun.
A few minutes more and he was at the mouth of Graveyard Gulch, with Charleston on its rutted shelf a little to his left front. The thudding and rumbling of the stamp mill was louder now, each stroke of the rock-crusher sending its shock of hard noise against him. He clucked to the filly and neck-reined her to his right toward a little hogback crowned with a clutter of greasewood and ocotillo. She took the low slope easily. Around him the wind bustled in the brush and he heard blown grains of sand rattling among the twisty stems and hard-edged leaves. The bright brisk air washed over him.
The filly crested the rise. Here he stopped. On this loftier spot the clamor of the stamps came throbbing to him unimpeded across the tops of the cottonwoods that lined the river below, the river itself running scant and chocolate-colored, and underneath the noise of the stamps he heard the constant rattle of the ore in the mill's troughs. The racket drowned out the rush of wind and sand. He could not yet see the mill, but above the treetops he glimpsed its tall stacks spouting rooster-tails of smoke that ran in dingy wind-driven plumes along the bottom of the sky.
He spoke and the filly carried him down into the flecked shade of the cottonwooods. The wind gusted at the trees and whipped at the edges of his clothes. Breaking from the timber, he came to the expanse of new green gramma. He gave Gypsy her head. Her stride was easy. The thought of her somewhat eased his chafed temper. He smiled on the spot between her little ears. He'd swapped his old gray and twenty dollars American for her a week ago in Cananea; it was the best deal he’d ever made on a saddle mount. In fact, it was the first time he could remember that he’d gotten a pony legal; but it was worth it, having papers on his Gitanita Guapa. He crooned to her and leaned and gave her an approving whack on the withers.
But then the sight of the new mill on its ugly hummock sucked out of him the good humor the notion of his pony had briefly inspired. Behind, Charleston was unlovely enough—little more than a huddle of mud-brick huts strung together with coyote fencing; it might have been made by dirt-daubers. But what stood before him—a broad frame building beneath an enormous slant of roof, spewing its volumes of smoke and steam from two tall stacks—looked monstrous. It might have been what had come of some unnatural mating of the the earth and the worst of all possible architectures that man might conceive. All around it the slope looked diseased, pitted and pockmarked, swarming with men and mule-teams and wagons, swept now and then by blowing clouds of rock-powder.
He couldn't abide the thought of going nearer. So he swung the pony about, back toward Charleston A dry wash turned off and he followed it past the lower end of the village with the adobe hovels along the trash-littered lane the Charleston folk were pleased to call Fifth Street passing shoulder-high on his right hand. Riding up out of the wash he entered the path leading past the irrigation ditches that fed the Chink truck farms on the outskirts of the town. Some of the Celestials were working around a trunk-gate. They bowed low as he approached, showing him the tops of their cone-shaped wicker hats. He'd fixed up his shooter to quicken it some while he was Below, and seeing the Chinks he thought this a grand opportunity to pull her off against something livelier than cholla and paddle cactus. He'd sawed the barrel down even with the ejecting rod and cut away the front of the trigger guard and tied the trigger back with whang and loosened the action so she'd fire if you glanced at her crosseyed.
He drew her and sliphammered two rounds into the
trunk-gate where one of the rat-eaters was standing, and the Chink jumped off
into the ditch and the others scattered.
"I string up Chinks by their God-damned pigtails and cut their
throats like hogs while they dangle!" he hollered at them. "I’m the original boss hand of all
Chink-killers in the whole of America!"
He fired off his other three loads and kicked up pebbles around the
heels of the ones that were running while the one in the ditch-water kept
ducking his head and making praying-motions with the knuckles of both hands
pressed together. Charleston was used to gunfire and nobody would come running. The piece had shot
smooth and Brocius was pleased.
Reloading
with his reins loosely dallied, he rode up out of the wash and took Mitchell Street
north and came into the town, walking the pony past Charlie Tarbell's Eagle
Hotel, past Jaw Bone Clark's dance hall and Jack Swartz's saloon and Quinn's
and Jerry Barton's. On the porch of the
Chinaman's restaurant a row of idle laborers roosted on a wooden bench like so
many buzzards and a huge sow dozed by the doorway of the express office. He noted how delicate were the white lashes fringing the sow's closed eyes. The air was full of fine rock crystals that
glittered like a cloud of floating diamonds might.
They settled into his eyes and he tasted their grit in his
mouth. He smelled the odor of coal-smoke
and the sweetish stink of shit. In front
of Ayers's place he reined back and sat his pony beneath the alamosas looking
over the little blue mustang ground-hitched there with the English Boys' Empire
brand on its rump plain as day, and John R's center-fire, full-stamped rig on
its back. Brocius shook his head and
thought, The least he could do was blot the God-damned brand.
Just
then John R himself emerged from the outhouse and came limping up the path
toward the saloon. He was coatless and
in his sock feet. One foot was wrapped
thick with a filthy bandage. His
fine-boned face looked oddly delicate behind its fierce brush of mustache and
below the flattish crown of auburn hair, till you noticed the level stare it
meted out. He carried his roll-brimmed
white hat against his breast, and from his free hand his bandanna trailed softly
in the dirt behind him like a fallen banner, and Brocius could see that he was
as tight as a tick. John R paused and
tottered very slightly, looking at him but giving no sign of recognition. He placed his hat exactly level on his head
and solemnly began to wind the bandanna around his throat. Presently he remarked in a tone of ridicule,
"Some pony."
For
answer Brocius spoke of her best virtue:
"She's got bottom." He
dismounted and fed her two sticks of horehound.
He hitched her to the rail while she munched and began to loosen her
cinch, eyeing John R across the saddle-seat as he slowly advanced along the
path. "Thought you was over at
Sonoita.""Was. I came back."
"There's a true bill out on you, for jumping bail on that Safford business."
"I know it." Unsteadily John R knelt and ran his hands over the thorn-scars on the filly's fetlocks. "She's used to rough country," he observed. He stood again and shook his head. "Still, I could never abide a filly." He fixed Brocius with iron-gray eyes. "Don't think much of a calico, neither."
Brocius grinned. "The color don't go plumb through, like a marble cake."
"Something's wrong in the breeding," John R insisted. "The bloodlines are all crossed up. It's a degenerate." He took Brocius by the shoulder and gently but firmly shook him. "You must get drunk like me. Come inside and get full with me. Then we'll come back out and shoot this damned hybrid beast." He turned Brocius to the door and led him inside.
With the windows shuttered against the blowy weather, the place was dim. Old newspapers covered the walls and the single Rayo lamp hanging from the ceiling beam awakened mellow antique colors in them that seemed to fetch the walls agreeably close. A fire was burning in the potbellied stove, and the first touch of its warmth reminded Brocius how chilled and sore he was, after the long ride up from Old Mex. John R settled at a table next to the stove and poured them both a drink while Brocius unbuttoned his coat and nodded a wordless greeting to Ayers, who lounged behind the bar absorbed in a yellowbacked number of Beadle's Dime Library entitled Revenge of the Border Scouts.
Brocius
eased gratefully into a chair and accepted the brimming tumbler John R shoved
across. "You ought to blot that
brand, you know," he advised.
"And that ain't no April Fool." But John R didn't seem to hear him. He sat slumped forward over the table, gazing
into his glass. His wrists were crossed
and his long white hands lay in repose like two implements dropped there, inert,
waiting to be put to use. Brocius tried
again. "Walter Vail's not a man to
set still for having his stock stole and then left on the public street with
its kept-up mark a-showing plain as a bull's pecker."
John
R said nothing, so Brocius relaxed against the back of his chair and propped
his boots on the table where a bottle of Virginia Dew and two tumblers sat waiting as if Ayers had known they were coming. He listened
awhile to the snap and whine of the piñon-wood
in the stove and the ticking of the old Seth Thomas clock behind the bar. But there was no escape from the stamp mill's
commotion. It traveled from the dirt
floor up through the legs of the chair and into his bones.
After
a spell John R broke his silence.
"About that Safford business. I never meant it, you know."
Brocius
smiled. "It damn sure looked like you meant
it. You blowed part of his cheekbone out
the back of his neck."
John
R picked up his drink and tossed it off in a single motion of head and arm,
then his hands returned to their position on the tabletop, crossed in expectant
immobility. "Was he a nigger, or a
breed? I recollect he was
dark-complected."
"No,
he was fair. Till you shot him in the
face, anyway." Brocius
grinned. "After that he was some
darker, from the powder."
"Seems
to me he was a nigger or a Mex or a breed."
"You
was so drunk, it could've been your own little old mother," Brocius
laughed. "But you run yourself a
good straight line afterwards. I expect
you was cold-sober as you passed through the door."
A
faint gleam of humor kindled in John R's eyes.
"That's so," he admitted.
"A rational man, flying his coat-tails to the breeze." But he didn't smile. He examined his empty glass. "I reckon I'm through down on the Gila
for a spell."
"Hell," said Brocius,
"Safford ain't no God-damned paradise that I ever noticed."
John R sank back into his chair, took out his watch and began winding it. Morosely he nibbled one end of his mustache. He snapped the watch shut and strung it across his middle and poured himself another glass of Virginia Dew. "I see worms in my dinner and snakes in my saddlebags. The jim-jams come over me at night. I'm broke down." He hoisted the glass and drained it.
John R sank back into his chair, took out his watch and began winding it. Morosely he nibbled one end of his mustache. He snapped the watch shut and strung it across his middle and poured himself another glass of Virginia Dew. "I see worms in my dinner and snakes in my saddlebags. The jim-jams come over me at night. I'm broke down." He hoisted the glass and drained it.
"You
ain't near the wreck you say you are."
"No,
mine's a fatal case."
"You've
been saying so six months or more. Yet
here you set."
"There's
such a thing as despair."
Brocius
laughed. "There is, but 't'ain't
fatal."
"You're
wrong. A man can waste himself, and then
see what he's done and fall into despair, and die of it."
"Your
trouble is, you're too God-damned educated for your own good. You've been up
there in the Cherry-Cows reading all them pomes and romances and such till
you've confused yourself with some damn English cunny-boy, perishing of a
broken heart. Why, you're an example of
the dangers of education."
"Still,
I'm broke down." John R extended his
leg and woefully regarded the grimy dressing on his foot. "I'm lame," he mourned. "I got full and shot myself in my very
own foot, and now I'm lame."
Brocius
rolled his eyes. "It's a month now
since you done that. The God-damned
thing is healed by now. Take off that
wrapping afore it rots, and the foot with it." Bored with John R's self-pity, he turned his
attention to the dime edition Ayers was examining. "Say, J.B., who are the God-damned
Border Scouts anyway, and why are they out for revenge?"
Ayers
pointed to a figure on the cover that looked to Brocius more like one of those
old-time Spanish Main pirates than anything ever seen along the border, who
appeared to be scalping some poor wretch alive.
"That there is Deadshot Dick Plummer, the most fearless scout and
Deputy United States Marshal in the Indian Nations," Ayres replied, pointing to the figures on the cover,"and the chap he's working
on with the steel is a breed name of the Choctaw Kid. The Kid is a fiend in
human form who ravished and murdered Dick's intended."
Brocius
whistled. "Hell, if he done that, I
wouldn't be cutting off his hair." He rolled himself a quirly and lit up. "I've been in the Nations, J.B., and I
don't recollect no Deadshot Dick atall.
Though I will admit to encountering a fiend or two."
"It's
all very well for you to mock me," John R complained, put out that Brocius
wouldn't credit the calamity of his having wounded himself. He poured a fresh swallow. Outside, the gusts whistled and murmured at
the corners of the saloon and puffs of pink dust blew into the room around the
edges of the shutters. The flame in the lamp guttered and smoked. "The
trouble with you is," he said, "you're too God-damned full of
hope. And confident hope at that."
Brocius
shrugged in agreement. "I expect
I am a hopeful cuss."
John
R made a short, explosive, deprecating noise in the back of his throat. "You're a fool. What good did it ever do you?"
After
a moment's thought Brocius drew on his quirly and replied, "Well, lately them boys over
yonways"—he tipped his head to the east, in the direction of the San Simon
and the country along the New Mexican line—"they’ve been letting me take
point."
Surprisingly,
it was so. He'd ridden into the San
Simon Valley over there a year ago with Bob Martin after they’d skipped Texas
and bided some time in Chihuahua. After
Bob got killed at Stein’s Pass, Brocius ran into Joe Olney at San Simon Cienega
hazing a rustled herd of Mex beeves up to Camp Grant to sell to the army. He'd known Joe in Burnet County before Joe
had to take leave of that place for letting out the light of a deputy sheriff, who was also
the sheriff's brother-in-law, in the Hoodoo War. Joe called himself Joe Hill now. He’d hired Brocius on. John R was in that outfit too. So were Pony Diehl and Jim Hughes and Dave
Estes and some others of the boys that rode with Brocius now. And it was true, they were giving him the point.
The
San Simon agreed with Brocius, and right off the reel he’d approved enough of
Joe, Pony and them that it almost made up for disliking John R so much. It hadn't been long before Brocius went into
the cow business for himself, taking in the stock from the greaser rancheros down Below and driving it
north to sell at Camp Grant or the big Apache reservation at San Carlos. He’d settled on a small spread in the
Chiricahuas and soon set himself up on another one at the Roofless Dobe in the
Animas Valley, building a rock chosa just this side the line.
All
through that country—the Animas, the San Simon, the San Bernadino, the Sulphur
Spring—hands like himself, who'd come in riding the highlines and craning at
the back-trail just as he'd done, were camping on the cienegas and tanks, running cows they'd gathered in Old Mex, Texas
men most of them, that had done what he'd done and wanted what he wanted. They'd turned to him, and he'd known they'd follow him if he led out. Seemed
he had the knack of leading rough fellows, a talent previously
unsuspected. It fell way short of
likely—they were mostly in their twenties and he was an old duffer on the far
side of forty and rheumatic and his gut hung out over his saddle-horn like a
sack of oats—but they liked the way he carried himself and they enjoyed his
large laugh and his joking ways and easygoing manner. They liked it that he'd take a good deal of
water before getting his mane up, that he never cared to swagger and brag, yet
was right-down game and feared nobody whenever called out and then always
gained the edge he needed and used it.
He could make a flash and drop a man as quick as any. Finally they respected him because his
judgment was mostly sound. All of them,
that is, except John R, who had no respect for anybody, least of all himself.
"I've
made no fortune like I meant to when I run off from that farm in Indiana,"
Brocius went on. "I've eat beans
till I fart like the trump of Gabriel and I'm stuck full of jonco thorns and
I've got a pound of horseshit in the arches of both boots, and mostly I ain't
got two Mex dobe-dollars to rub together.
But I ain't despairing, not like you, amigo. With the boys backing
me like they are, why, I'm the jefe over
yonder." Again he dipped his head
to the east.
"You
may be jefe across the range,"
John R said. "But it's only because
the Old Man never bestirred himself to reach that far." He grimaced, showing his blunt, spaced,
yellow-rooted teeth. Slowly and
mockingly he wagged his head. "And
they tell me you're fixing to cross to this side."
Sharply
Brocius eyed him. "Who's telling
such a thing?"
John
R chuckled and allowed his finger-ends to flutter in the air beside his
ear. "Imps. Gremlins.
A dozen tiny angels dancing on the head of a pin." Then he turned grim. "As things go, you can do as you please
over in the San Simon country. But if
you come a-poaching this side, then the Old Man and Sheriff Charlie will get
cross with you."
"If
I take your meaning," Brocius said smirking, "you're counseling me
against an ambition to better myself."
"No,
I'm counseling you against harboring your confident hope."
Brocius
sighed, dropped the stub of his quirly to the floor and crushed it under his boot. He was a stout man with big
stooped shoulders and a paunch, a man whose whose joints ached. He was grizzled and twisty and gnarled as a
juniper on the windward side of a bluff. His mop of tangled black hair—the boys
called him Curly Bill on account of it—had waves of tarnished silver in it but
his mustache was red with sun-bleach and turned up at the ends, making him look
roguishly pleased even when he wasn't.
He'd punched cows in every part of Texas and in the Indian Territory and
then for awhile in the Seven Rivers country on the Pecos. He’d partnered with Bob Martin awhile, helped
Bob brace the Mesilla stage, winged a pair of nigger passengers, got arrested,
busted out of the El Paso jail. Not once
in all that time had he ever had a dream or an ambition beyond making a raise
of spoils or drawing a steady wage and found.
Now, when he was bunged-up and past his prime, this aspiration had seized
him, unlikely as it was.
It
could hardly seem any more peculiar to John R than it did to Brocius
himself. But the boys feared nobody more
than John R, and if he opposed a thing, not a one of them would try it; without
his help, or at least his indifference, what Brocius had in mind was bound to
fail. John R was the hardest of that
hard bunch and could've bossed the outfit himself if he'd wanted to. But he was a man of breeding fallen on bad times,
was often drunk because of it, and embittered by ill fortune he liked to lean
back and sneer at the hopes and schemes of others. This was the flighty bird Brocius had to
snare.
He
took his boots off the table and leaned close. "There's a big traffic
around Tombstone now, and along the river 'twixt here and Old Mex and down Tucson-way. And it's getting bigger by the day. The Old Man's poorly. Some say he's gone feeble-minded." He jerked a thumb at the noise of the
steam-hammers. "He won't even take
any goods out of the mining, though he could, protected as he is by the Ring. He'll go into Sonora on a rustling raid, or
he’ll layway the greaser conductas
carrying contraband, but he won't come north of Fritz's Spring to do business
on the bullion stages and mine paymasters and other suchlike. Yet think of the treasure to be had. I've heard his boys are longing for them
goods. I'm thinking maybe they'll cut
their sorry old daddy out, if a certain jefe
from across the way was to put it to 'em just right."
John
R had been watching him without expression, and now once more slowly shook his
head. "You reckon Providence has
appointed us boys to try and stop that racket?" he asked with a crooked
grin, raising his voice against the noise of the ore-stamps.
Brocius
didn’t know what he’d meant by the remark and wondered if John R himself
did. "Stop it? Can't nobody stop it." Darkly Brocius scowled at the seeming bleakness of
the notion. "I only mean to grab
off some of the goods that come of it."
But
John R continued as if he hadn't heard.
"We're ruffians and vagabonds.
We amuse ourselves with drink and go about armed and do mischief. Mischief is about all we can do. Yet you think
Providence has assigned us this great high work."
He
motioned toward the mill. "They dig
shafts miles deep in the earth. They
build railroads. They stop up rivers and
break rocks with steam-powered machines.
If you’re right that Providence has assigned you this task, then
Providence has its sense of irony. It
has given you your confident hope, but look what It's given them." He offered a wolfish smile. "Providence, you see, is a bitch. Hell, God's
a bitch. He's pitted us ants against
giants. It makes Him laugh to watch us
scurry about. He laughs till He shits,
I’m telling you." He lifted his
glass and drank. "That's the world,
mi amigo."
Brocius
regarded him with a mixture of contempt and ridicule. "You're so damn drunk on rot you don't know what in the hell you're
saying. And you’re blaspheming and I
don’t care a damn for it."
"You've
made a cozy little nook for yourself rustling beef over in the San Simon,"
John R shot back "You should be
content with that. You're too fat and old to light up such a fire in your belly
now. The boys admire you because you're
droll and make them laugh, not because they think you're Jesse James. Listen to me, you're no bandit chief, you're
a cheap low rustler, nearly used up.” He
wagged his head. “Take no counsel of your
goddamned confident hope."
It
rankled Brocius to be belittled so. What
great deed had John R ever done, pulling always on his bottle, bemoaning a
misspent life, sitting in judgment on the merit of others? Once upon a time down in Texas he was so
bloody that men spoke of him in the same breath with Hardin, Thompson, Longley
and that stripe. He was running then
with Scott Cooley's bunch in those Mason County troubles. But finally he showed himself mean and
vicious, where most of Cooley's boys wanted at least to play a square game,
hard but square. Once he shot down a
poor unarmed Dutchman while the fellow was wiping his face with a washrag. He shot that poor chap in Safford last year
because the fellow ordered beer instead of whiskey when John R was
treating. Such acts scared the daylights
out of everybody that knew of them, but Brocius thought them a poor basis for
John R rendering opinions on anybody's conduct.
But
before he could utter a rejoinder, a crowd of Cousin Jacks came bursting in,
requiring Ayers regretfully to lay by his yellowback. Shakily John R stood. "I'm headed down to Tucson. Let's go outside and execute your unnatural
horse."
Brocius
declined the invitation; he planned to take the Barfoot trail up past Tombstone
and then through the Dragoons into the Sulphur Spring, and so along to the San
Simon. So they two gathered up their
plunder and said their good-byes to Ayres and outside under the alamosas they
stood to the saddle and rode out.
They
splashed across the ford and came up between the bluffs into a cluster of
cabins that had cropped up in the weeks since Brocius last visited. John R said the place was called Millville.
They rode past the roaring stamp mill looming amid its ugly mounds of ore tailings. They followed the rising ground northeast
toward the cluster of hills where the silver camp of Tombstone lay. The Mule Mountains frowned on the skyline
beyond, and on their left they could see the southern tail of
the Whetstones. The road was full of
wagon traffic, bull trains bringing lumber up to Tombstone from the Huachucas,
ore trains coming down to the mill, even a full twenty-four-mule jerkline
outfit complete with trailers and a junk wagon, hauling mining machinery. The noise and the dust drove them off the
road, and they struck out cross-trail to avoid it; and presently, without any further
talk, they parted to travel their separate ways.
In
spite of John R's carping, already it was in Brocius's mind to scrawl a letter
to the Old Man's youngest, and ask Billy if he wouldn't ride down to Tucson and
sit together with him and Sheriff Charlie Shibell of Pima County and make medicine. Billy might be but eighteen, yet he was a
sturdy hundred-sixty-pounder and a man in every way that counted, and was the
steadiest and shrewdest of the Old Man’s get.
Friends of Brocius that knew Billy had confided the boy could see the
sense in laying hands on the spoils the silver strike was offering, even if the
Old Man resisted it and seemed happy just to rustle stock. Brocius would see if he and Billy couldn't
fix up with Charlie Shibell what the Old Man had fixed up with him and with
that Tucson Ring of politicians too. And
then Brocius would turn the head of his little Gypsy-pony toward the San Pedro
and, by God, he’d come in, and he’d fetch the San Simon and Sulphur Spring boys with him too.
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