Читать книгу The Saga of Billy the Kid - Walter Noble Burns - Страница 6

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There was great bustle and stir in Lincoln town on the morning of February 13, 1878. Horsemen clattering in along the cañon roads. The hitching-rack at the Big Store lined with saddled ponies. Hard-eyed men standing in sinister groups in the street, leaning on rifles. Murphy’s bar doing a rushing business, the Mexican behind the counter hardly able to set out bottles and glasses fast enough. “Step up, boys, this is on me.” “Buena salud!” “Fill ’em up again.” Important conferences between Murphy and Sheriff Brady in grave undertones. Dolan swaggering. The subterranean Riley padding about with bland smiles.

Then at a word twenty men swung into the saddle, six-shooters at belt, rifles across pommels, and rode off, horses caracoling and curvetting; Billy Morton in command, newly made a deputy sheriff by Sheriff Brady; in the posse Frank Baker, Billy Matthews, Tom Hill, John Robinson, several Mexicans; no records existing as to who the others were; all said to have been on Murphy’s payroll. Morton and Brady were veteran cowboys and had been friends of Billy the Kid, from now on to be his enemies and he theirs. Tom Hill was a rough, loudmouthed bully said to have killed a man or two. Jesse Evans, also a friend of Billy the Kid, with genuine boldness of spirit and skilful with weapons, was said by some to have been in the company but denied it later, saving his life doubtless by his denial.

Past the McSween home, Mrs. McSween silently watching from her front door, the posse jogged; past the McSween-Tunstall store, the little Church of San Juan, the Montaña House, the Ellis House, the store and saloon of Juan Patron, black-shawled Mexican women staring from their dooryards, dusky urchins hugging their mothers’ skirts and peering with frightened eyes. So out of town southward down Bonito Cañon to disappear behind a shoulder of the hills.

Murphy had sworn out an attachment against the McSween-Tunstall store with purpose to collect the old debt he alleged against Fritz; a procedure within his right and of unquestionable legality, since McSween had collected the money on the Fritz insurance and had deposited it in the bank in his own name. But he also had sworn out an attachment for the same purpose against Tunstall’s ranch and livestock on the Rio Feliz, with full knowledge that Tunstall owned the Rio Feliz property in his sole right and McSween had no part or parcel in it. This action was without colour of legality and, it would seem, judged by the upshot of the affair, was taken only to get Tunstall out of the way as a rival stockman and, as McSween’s partner in the store, as a rival merchant.

The attachment against the store was never served; but Murphy had placed his attachment against Tunstall in the hands of Sheriff Brady, his handy man, who had forthwith sworn in a posse and sent it off to the Rio Feliz. Such duty as this ordinarily is a formality delegated to a single deputy, and in this instance there was no reason to assume that Tunstall would not accept service peaceably and leave it to a court to decide the issue. But here, at Murphy’s behest, was a warlike expedition setting off to serve a simple process. Plainly enough this posse of twenty men armed to the teeth was bound on no peaceful mission.

Meanwhile, on the Feliz ranch, Tunstall went about his duties with no inkling of danger. No vagrant rumour had brought him tidings of attachment or approaching posse. With business to be arranged in Lincoln, and the winter’s day being warm and sunny, he set off on horseback for town accompanied by two of his men. Dick Brewer, his foreman, was one of these. The other was a quiet, gray-eyed, slender youth, only a few months in this part of the country, his name not yet bruited to any wide extent, known as Billy the Kid.

While riding across the divide between the Feliz and the Ruidoso on their way to Lincoln, the three men ran upon a flock of wild turkeys which scurried off among the chaparral thickets in the hills. With visions of a fat tom roasted to a turn and served with dressing and savoury sauce for their dinner that evening at the McSween home, Brewer and Billy the Kid set off into the hills after the turkeys. Tunstall rode on alone, his horse at a walk, expecting the other two to join him farther along the trail.

Suddenly from behind him sounded the drumming of horses’ hoofs. Turning in his saddle he saw the Lincoln posse galloping full-tilt toward him. He faced his horse about and waited for them, with a quizzical smile. As they drew near, he recognized familiar faces. He had hobnobbed with these boys in Lincoln in the days just after his arrival. He believed, it seems, they were still his friends merely bent upon some madcap prank.

“By jove, boys,” he exclaimed jovially as they came dashing up all about him, “what’s up? Eh?”

 His answer was a shot which tumbled him dead from his saddle. Some say Billy Morton fired the shot; some say, on what seems better evidence, Tom Hill. At least, after Tunstall had fallen to the ground, Hill leaped from his horse and, sticking a rifle to the back of Tunstall’s head blew out his brains. Half-drunk with whisky and mad with the taste of blood, the savages turned the murder of the defenseless man into an orgy. Pantilon Gallegos, a Bonito Cañon Mexican, hammered in his head with a jagged rock. The Britisher had thought it all a joke. Well, they would make it a good joke while they were about it. They killed Tunstall’s horse, stretched Tunstall’s body beside the dead animal, face to the sky, arms folded across his breast, feet together. Under the man’s head they placed his hat and under the horse’s head his coat carefully folded by way of pillows. So murdered man and dead horse suggested they had crawled into bed and gone to sleep together. This was their devil’s mockery, their joke, ghastly, meaningless. Then they rode back to Lincoln, roaring drunken songs along the way.

The posse, taking a short cut across the hills from Lincoln, had ridden first to Tunstall’s ranch and, finding it deserted, had overtaken Tunstall five miles from home. Lucky for Billy the Kid and Brewer that they had gone hunting wild turkeys, else they would have shared Tunstall’s fate. From a distant hillside they witnessed the murder. It was over so quickly that no forlorn-hope effort at aid on their part would have availed. Nothing was left to do but save themselves. Unseen, they slipped over the crest of the hills.

Back once more in Lincoln, Morton and his men reported to Murphy and Sheriff Brady. Ashamed of their deed, they took refuge in mendacities. They had found Tunstall’s ranch turned into a fortress, they said, with breastworks of logs and bags of sand. He had taken flight and when, after hard pursuit, they had run him down, he had opened fire upon them. His resistance had compelled them to kill him. A plausible tale, perhaps, but given the lie later by certain of the posse men themselves, who repented of their cowardly deed. But Tunstall was dead. That was the important fact to Murphy. He set out free liquor at his bar that night, and the dawn found his liegemen still at their celebrations.

Mexicans were sent out at night by McSween to fetch in the corpse. They found Tunstall as his murderers had left him, composed as for sleep, head pillowed on his hat, the moon shining in his wide-open eyes. They laid him across a burro’s back and set out on their homeward journey across the mountains by unfrequented paths. Close to the ground hung the dead man’s feet on one side of the little beast and head and hands on the other. Nettles and briars beside the trail cruelly lacerated his hands and face and tore his trousers’ legs to shreds. Hints of morning were showing above the eastern hilltops when the tragic journey ended at the door of McSween’s store in Lincoln.

They buried Tunstall that day back of the McSween store on a bench of ground overlooking the Bonito River. Billy the Kid was in the little group that stood beside the grave as the body was returned to earth. Tunstall had been his friend as well as his employer. But there were no tears in his eyes nor any sign of grief. This boy had his own way of paying tribute to a lost friend, and tears were no part of his ritual. From the brink of this grave which was for him the brink of a new career that was to be filled with graves, he turned away and, strolling to the front porch of the McSween store, lounged against a post and rolled himself a cigarette.

News of Tunstall’s murder spread through the mountains, and the clans gathered as at the summons of a fiery cross. From every direction armed men came riding into Lincoln. Fifty men soon rallied round McSween; as many aligned themselves with Murphy. Viewed impartially, it is now clear that Murphy’s cause was basically wrong and McSween’s basically right; that Murphy was an unscrupulous dictator, McSween the champion of a principle; that Murphy stood for lawlessness, McSween for law. However, the question of right or wrong was but lightly considered. Men ranged themselves on one side or the other according to old allegiances and personal interests. Few remained neutral. It was Murphy or McSween: take your choice or take the consequences.

Not a few on both sides were actuated by purely mercenary motives. Little standing armies were organized by both leaders, made up of fighting men hired at handsome wages. These fighters were the roughest fellows of the country, hard riders, hard drinkers, bravos ready for any adventure or desperate enterprise. There was little to choose between the rank and file of the two factions; not all the good men were on McSween’s side nor all the bad ones on Murphy’s.

When he became the leader of a faction organized for war, McSween stuck to his religious principles, remained through the tumult of the times a scrupulous Christian. Circumstances forced him into leadership for which he was not equipped. The swift current of events swept him into bloody vendetta. To survive he must fight. His life was in the balance. But his personal attitude from first to last was defensive. He neither planned violence nor countenanced it. The blows struck against his enemies were the work of his fighting men acting on their own initiative.

Dick Brewer, veteran of the border, was appointed leader of the McSween fighting forces, and Billy the Kid, not by appointment but by native qualities, became Brewer’s chief lieutenant. Plans of campaign were discussed by McSween, Brewer, and Billy the Kid in the parlour of McSween’s home.

“I’m going to shoot down like a dog every man I can find who had part in Tunstall’s murder,” said the Kid.

Brewer listened in grim silence. This was strong language from an unknown, beardless boy.

“Don’t do that,” advised McSween mildly. “Let’s forget revenge. We must fight only in defense of our lives and property.”

“Tunstall was my friend,” declared the Kid, and that seemed to him to cover the situation.

Tunstall and Billy the Kid had been worlds apart in everything. Tunstall had had a background of breeding and culture; the Kid’s background was the frontier. They differed as night from day in character, thought, outlook on life. White for Tunstall was black for the Kid. But strangely enough, a strong friendship had developed between them. Their friendship was their only common ground. Friendship was one of the few things the Kid held sacred; an injury to a friend was an injury to him, and he held by the ancient law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

With the murder of the Englishman, the Kid threw himself into the feud to avenge his friend’s death. There seems no reason to attribute any other motive to him. Others fought for hire. Billy the Kid’s inspiration was the loyalty of friendship. But this sentiment of knightly devotion, with which he must be credited, was united with a spirit of primitive savagery which held the blood of his friend’s enemies the best libation he could pour to the memory of his friend.