Angus Wells got lucky in Lincoln.
He spent three days talking to the commanding officer at Fort Stanton, his brother officers, enlisted men, to the post traders Murphy and Dolan. Murphy, a Satanic-looking, hard-drinking Irishman, had held officer rank in the Army and was known universally as ‘the Colonel’.
He had served in Carleton’s California Column and remembered Richard Cravetts. He told Wells that the ex-Captain had settled on a ranch in the Tularosa Valley in the late sixties, and been raided out by Mescaleros.
‘Lost track of him after that,’ he recalled, pouring another liberal glassful of whiskey out and drinking it greedily. They were sitting in the rambling building on the edge of the sprawled fort, looking out at the parade ground, dazzling white in the burning sun.
‘You sure you won’t have another, Mr. Wells?’ Murphy asked.
Wells shook his head and Murphy poured himself another drink. It seemed to make no difference to his speech or posture.
‘We’ve been having our own troubles in these parts,’
Murphy went on. ‘Lot of rustling, some killings over at Placita — Lincoln, they call it now — the county seat. Old John Chisum’s jingle-bob warriors take it hard when someone steals their boss’s beef.’ He grinned as if it was a huge joke. ‘But I recall Cravetts had some real trouble over in Lincoln. A shooting affair, as I recall. You ought to ride over and talk to Ham Mills, the sheriff. He’ll probably be able to tell you more.’
Wells rode across the hills to the little town of Lincoln.
It lay athwart a noisy stream called the Bonito, straggling along a street shaped like a flattened S, adobes and crude y shacks well spaced on both sides. Ham Mills was a huge man, with a white scar on his jaw. He scratched his head awhile, then plunged into the welter of papers and books in his old roll-topped desk. Eventually he found the document he was looking for.
‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘Cravetts, Richard. Assault with a deadly weapon, intent to kill. I remember that now.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Early last year, it was. He came up here to sell some horses. Him and another fellow, young tough with tow hair an’ a Southern accent. Lee something.’
‘Monsher?’ Wells supplied, and Mills smacked his thigh with a hand like a hammer. ‘Monsher it was!’ he said. ‘Bad lot, I reckoned.’
‘What happened? Wells asked.
‘Forget the details,’ Mills said. ‘But I recall it was in Patron’s place. Some hombre named Goss, Gross, somethin’ like that, came to me an’ claimed Cravetts an’ that Monsher feller stole his horses off his ranch down Alamogordo way, wanted me to get his money off of them. I told him he’d have to swear out a complaint afore the justice, “Green” Wilson, but he swore at me an’ said he didn’t have no time for that kind o’ fiddle-faddle. Next I know he went down Patron’s saloon an’ called those two jaspers out. There was a shootin’ and Cravetts an’ Monsher lit out, leavin’ Goss three parts dead.’
“Didn’t anyone try to stop them?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Mills said. ‘We got out a posse an’ chased them clear across to Three Rivers, but they headed out into the malpais, an’ you couldn’t track a elephant in the White Sands, mister.’
Wells nodded. He knew the vast and featureless expanse that was called White Sands. Hundreds and hundreds of square miles of glaring white gypsum sand stretched from Socorro in the north almost as far south as the San Agustin Pass through the Organ Mountains. Men who did not want to be caught could find no better refuge from pursuers than that trackless waste.
‘Have you any idea where Cravetts and Monsher came from?’ Wells asked. ‘They told me over at the Fort that Cravetts used to have a ranch in the Tularosa valley.’
‘Afore my time,’ Mills told him. ‘I heerd they was from out Arizona Territory. Lordsburg was what I heerd.’
‘Lordsburg,’ Wells said. ‘Sounds likely, anyway.’
‘Likelier than they’d stay in Lincoln County anyways,’ Mills told him.
‘I still got a warrant out on both them jaspers they ever show their faces around here again.’ Wells rose to leave.
‘I’m obliged to you, Sheriff.’
‘No trouble,’ Mills said. ‘You ketch up with them jaspers, let me know. We got a quiet little town here an’ I aim to keep it that way.’
Wells headed on out of the sleepy little placita and up the canyon towards Fort Stanton. It was a long way to Mesilla and well over a hundred miles to Lordsburg from there. He kicked his horse into a run.