The Sons of Grady Rourke (2 page)

The two brothers shuffled toward the door. Their long fur coats nearly touched the dirt floor. They carried their battered, wide-brimmed hats.

“Thank you, Colonel. Liam must be on his way then.”

“Till tomorrow, boys. Good night.” Captain Purington opened the door to darkness and a biting wind. Powdery snow blew in and dusted his beard.

“Private, escort these men to the sergeants' hut. They'll bed down there tonight. And have someone tend to their animals.”

“Yes, sir. Follow me, please.”

Grady Rourke's sons pushed their hats down low over their ears and bowed their faces into their collars to avoid the wind. Without looking up, each brother instinctively found his horse's forehead and rubbed his animal's nose as they passed. The trooper blinked new snow from his eyes as they walked toward one of the camp's small cabins. Yellow lamp light cast inviting warmth from dirty windows fogged by the breath of two soldiers who watched the men approach out of the darkness.

“Colonel's orders,” the young trooper said as the night wind and swirls of powdery snow blew the three men into the warm cabin. Half a dozen black men stepped back from the freezing air. Two of the troopers still wore their blue flannel blouses. The others were already in their long woollies.

“Take a load off, sir,” the man closest to the door said as he smiled toward Patrick. “Hang your coats there by the fire to dry.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Sean said for the brothers. “We don't mean to be in the way.”

The trooper pointed toward pegs in the log walls near a stone hearth that blazed with pine timbers. Patrick suspended both coats on the pegs. Melting water quickly formed a mud puddle on the dirt floor.

“Carry on, Private,” the sergeant nodded. The young trooper sighed and marched grimly into the night. The wind stopped whistling when the door closed heavily.

“I'm Sean Rourke. This here is my little brother. I used to soldier.”

The sergeant squinted at the older brother's wrecked face. He recognized a soldier's face and he knew that extending his hand was premature civility. So he only nodded and pointed toward a small table.

“The coffee is hot, sir, and you're both welcome to bunk down tonight. The biscuits are hard. But they're warm and will fill you till morning.”

The two brothers sat down and sighed at the sudden comfort. The congenial sergeant stepped toward the fire and retrieved a small sack from the mantel. When he laid it on the table between the brothers, he could smell the whiskey.

“Help yourself to our tobacco. Save yours for the trail.”

The brothers thanked the big man in unison.

“We have four empty bunks, so you can take your pick.”

“Thank you,” Sean said wearily. He felt his scarred cheek warming from the fire and sensed how hard his southern accent fell on the sergeant's ears. The older brother looked up and extended his right hand toward the soldier. The trooper touched the veteran's hand carefully, as if it were a fragile thing of value.

“We're much obliged, Sergeant.”

The soldier nodded and released Sean Rourke's firm handshake. Then he pulled his government issue suspenders off his wide, blue shoulders. The braces dangled against his sides.

“Then we'll turn in, Mr. Rourke. We've had a long day out in that there cold.”

“If you don't mind, Sergeant, my brother and I'll just sit by the fire for a little while until we thaw.” Sean's tom face and graying beard opened into an honest smile.

“Very well, sir. Light up, if you want. We can sleep through hail and high water, that's for damned sure.” The noncommissioned officer glanced sideways with a narrow grin. His head and kindly face gestured toward a clay jug wedged into a comer where the thick logs came together.

“There's some medicine in the jug if you need to help your circulation.”

Grady Rourke's sons smiled and nodded gratefully.

The other troopers had said nothing. With a chorus of “night, then” one at a time, each of the still dressed cavalry-men stripped down to his long woollies. The men climbed into their bunks and pulled heavy gray blankets up to their chins. The sergeant who had been talking laid an armload of new logs into the hearth before he bedded down last.

The quarters were warm and comfortable. Within five minutes, six soldiers were sleeping soundly. Patrick stood up, leaned toward the corner, and fetched the jug and two tin cups. He poured a dose of sour mash whiskey into each cup on the coarse table. When he sat down again, Sean nodded without a word. After lifting the cup to his cracked lips, he sighed deeply.

The fire crackled and sent embers looping upward into the stone chimney.

The two brothers sipped their whiskey for half an hour in silence. The wind moaned against the frosted windows almost as loudly as the severe snoring that rumbled from the soldiers.

Sean squinted toward the windows on either side of the doorway opposite the hearth. He watched the bright fire reflecting on the glass. Ice crusted around the edges of the panes and refracted the flames like cold prisms of crystal. As the cabin's warmth and the bitter medicine worked together, the one-time Confederate looked hard at the windows. The firelight dancing in the windows looked familiar and the night wind groaned like wolves at the door. Closing his eyes, Sean still saw the flames inside his exhausted head and the wind made the pitiful sound he had heard rising from a score of dismal battlefields fifteen years earlier. The howling grew until it sounded like a thousand men lying in their own blood and baying for water like wild, wounded animals.

Patrick sipped and watched the lines around his brother's closed eyes. The creases seemed to deepen as Sean's trail-numb mind drifted across the years of pain and defeat.

“Sean?”

The older brother opened his eyes slowly and turned his face toward his brother. In the fireplace light, the right half of Sean's face looked to Patrick like an ancient and gnarled oak tree—the kind in which mystical oriental kings buried their children in the tales of far away, which Patrick could vaguely remember in his mother's own voice.

“Are you all right?”

Sean turned back toward the iced windows. He laid his hand across the top of his tin cup as if to say that he was finished drinking.

“Well enough.”

O
NE OF THE
sergeants had stoked the fire back to life by the time their guests rubbed their eyes and climbed out of their blankets. Someone put a hot tin cup into Sean's hand before his eyes were open.

“Thanks.”

“Ain't nothin', sir. You'll need some heat in you just to make it to the mess tent.”

The travelers were surprised to see that the sky was still the hard blue-black of morning twilight in the mile-high morning. Although the wind had stopped howling from the western mountains, the pre-dawn air remained painfully cold. The civilians buried their faces in the collars of their ankle-length coats that dragged on new, powdery snow. Half a dozen cavalrymen in blue greatcoats escorted their guests to breakfast. Low in the east, the sky over Lincoln, New Mexico, was just turning pink. When Patrick looked up, he could still see a few bright stars shining. The moon had set and the stars did not twinkle in the thin, brittle air.

In the mess tent reserved for noncommissioned officers, the atmosphere was wonderful with the hearty scent of sourdough biscuits fried in bacon fat, strong coffee, and tobacco smoke. To Sean Rourke, the large tent smelled better than any woman he could remember. Breakfast comforted the brothers to their bones.

By the time the brothers pushed themselves outside, the stars were gone and the sky was clear and blue. The blinding snow in the valley was too bright for either brother to make out where the plain ended and the western mountains began. The snow cap on Capitan Mountain to the north was too painfully bright to look at.

The two travelers were surprised to find their mounts and pack horses already tacked and ready for the day's ride to Lincoln. Two troopers held the reins and halters.

“Thank you,” Sean said to one of the soldiers.

“The smithy reset the hind shoes of the bay, sir.” The private glanced at the brown animal that had snow glistening on his whiskers. “Said one was coming loose. So he done them both to set the angles right.”

Sean reached into his fur coat's deep pocket.

“Will you give your smithy a gold piece for us?”

“No need, sir. Besides, he won't take it from you. The old man said you was a soldier once.”

“Then tell your man that we said thanks.”

“I'll do that, sir.”

The tall youth handed the leathers to the two brothers. Sean and Patrick mounted slowly with their heavy coats holding them back. The orderly stepped back and looked up at Sean's ruined face. Gathering his reins, Sean straightened in the saddle and snapped off a brisk salute with parade ground precision.

Both orderlies took one step back, squared their heels, and returned the military courtesy with equal dignity. Sean nodded and led his brother east across the ocean of unspoiled snow.

T
HE
R
OURKE BROTHERS
slowly followed the frozen Rio Bonito eastward for ten miles. After half a day, the frozen river turned south.

“La Placita should be a mile beyond the bend.” Sean's words came with a cloud of steam. He was not yet accustomed to calling the town by its new name, Lincoln.

“I suppose,” Patrick stammered with lips too cold to work.

Sean reined his horse northward, away from the Rio Bonito. Directly ahead, Capitan Peak glistened brilliantly high in the southern sky. Leaving the river trail, the men guided their horses between waist-high gray boulders. The sun gave the icy rocks the glitter of diamonds. Rounding a slight rise a mile from the river, they stopped side by side. Beneath them in the midday sunshine was a run-down ranch house and crumbling outbuildings. Without a word, they spurred their mounts forward at an easy walk.

The four horses had to pick their feet up as they made their way over downed fence rails, which lay in heaps where a fence line had once stood. The riders drew rein and stopped five hundred yards from the ranch house. They glanced at each other and then back at the Rourke family ranch. At least a hundred head of cattle pawed the snow in search of grass. Some of the steers walked casually upon the weathered front porch.

“Pa's?” Patrick said as his lips cracked from a single word.

“No. Look at them ears. Seen it before down Pecos way in Texas.” Sean pointed to a thin steer fifty yards distant and not the least fazed by the horsemen.

Squinting into the sun, Patrick could see that each steer had the same ear defect or wound: Each animal's right ear was cut lengthwise to its base. Where the ear met the head, the lower half of the ear's underside flapped behind the eye. Every animal grazing had the same mutilation.

“A brand?” Patrick held his hand over his mouth when he spoke to ease the pain of the cold wind against his gums.

“John Chisum's brand. He calls it the ‘jingle-bob.' Didn't know he had cattle this far north. But we ain't been home in six years. Guess things change.”

“Maybe Pa bought them?” Patrick sounded hopeful.

“Ain't likely.” Without more, Sean spurred his horse through the cattle, which shuffled out of the way of the two riders and their pack horses. The droopy-eared steers seemed unafraid of mounted men as if they had experienced them often. When the brothers reached the house, they dismounted and led their four horses into a clapboard barn. It was too cold to leave their horses outside for long. Unsaddling their mounts and untacking the draft horses required ten minutes. The hungry horses nosed around for forage and found only moldy hay. But they snorted with relief to be sheltered from the biting wind.

Walking to the house, Sean used his hat to swat the rump of a steer that had claimed the front porch as his own. Before stepping off the porch, the animal left a hard and steaming cow pie behind, aimed with precision at the spot where Sean took his next step. With a curse, the older brother wiped his boot on the wooden railing before he opened the unlocked front door.

Inside, ragged furniture was covered with six inches of clean snow. One of the front windows was completely gone. Patrick went back out into the sunny afternoon. Sean went directly to the single large fireplace where he found unburned logs piled neatly against the stone. He knelt, removed his gloves, and worked to kindle a fire. His hands were stiff and his fingernails were blue from cold. By the time the fire was catching, Patrick entered with a hammer in his hand. He quickly pulled faded curtains across the broken window and nailed the cloth to the window frame to keep the winter outside.

“Pa had a tool box,” Patrick said with three rusty nails in his mouth.

A thin veil of white smoke rolled through the large room until the hearth began drafting into the chimney. With the door closed and the broken window covered, the house slowly warmed.

The Rourke brothers idled in the center of the room. They seemed uncomfortable, as if they were trespassing and expected to hear footsteps on the front porch. But the only noise was from the nearby cattle and the crackling hearth.

Sean peeled off his heavy coat and draped it over a high-backed, leather chair—a father's chair. The coat blew a small cloud of snow onto the snow drift in the middle of the floor. Water was already seeping from the drift and running between the floorboards. Patrick wiped snow from a second chair before he laid his coat down. The brothers stood side by side with their palms opened toward the blazing hearth.

“Smaller than I remember it,” Sean said into the fireplace.

“Me, too. Guess we growed over the years.”

Sean shrugged. As he warmed to the fire, he moved around the room, but came back to the hearth every few minutes to open his hands above the flames. Patrick kicked snow away with his boots and made tracks across the floor.