Whether you are running a rolling mill in Pittsburgh or dealing in horseflesh out in some western territory; the same iron laws of economics will apply to your business transactions. Among these inflexible principles, as fixed and immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, were two which applied especially to the Armstrong and Doolan families at that time and lay at the root of the troubles which were about to engulf them. First, demand stimulates supply. Secondly, competition tends inexorably to force down profits.
When the cattle market in the southern states and territories ceased to become profitable, Michael Doolan had seen that horses were, at least for the time being, likely to be a better bet for trading. Seth Armstrong’s boys came to a similar conclusion, at about the same time. By then, the two families were no longer on speaking terms and so they were in rivalry from the very beginning of their forays into horse trading. Both families soon found that buying and selling horses was unlikely to restore their fortunes and so swiftly turned to acquiring their stock through other means. At first, they went on the scout, picking up whatever they could, but it soon became apparent that they would only be getting two or three beasts at a time by this method; not to mention where the risks of being shot at or caught and lynched were uncomfortably high. All of which led to both families, each unknown to the other, making arrangements with the nearby Zuni Indians and enlisting their aid.
The Zuni hated the white men living in the northern part of New Mexico and Arizona and were happy to raid homesteads and even small towns; riding off with as many horses as they could manage. These they sold to the Doolans and Armstrongs. They had no more love for the two families than they did for any other white men and soon saw that there was opportunity to rack up the price on the stolen animals they sold. They told the Armstrongs that if they wouldn’t pay what was asked, then the Doolans would. The same line worked with the Doolans and so by the spring of 1867, even dealing wholesale in stolen horses was not sufficient to maintain the rival families as their sole source of income.
Jack Armstrong’s information was slightly out, because one of Michael Doolan’s sons had returned home that evening. When Jack, Jed and Albert splashed lamp oil over their torches and lit them, at about one in the morning, the Doolans’ house contained, in addition to Michael and his wife; their son Ezra and two of their daughters, namely Katy and Maire.
The first that Michael Doolan knew of any danger that night was when he was awoken by two pistol shots fired right beneath his bedroom window. He was awake and conscious at once and immediately aware of the flickering light of flames which he could see dancing on the ceiling above him. Fearing that somebody had torched the barn or, God forbid, the house itself, Doolan leaped from his bed and went racing downstairs. He was in such a state that he didn’t even stop to pick up the gun which hung at the foot of his bed. His wife had also been woken by the shooting and chased after her husband in an ecstasy of terror for what might befall him.
Not hesitating for the merest fraction of a second, Michael Doolan opened the front door and ran into the yard, wearing only his nightshirt. He was confronted by three riders holding flaming torches. The faces of all three of the men were obscured by spook masks and two of them were holding their torches in their left hands and clutching pistols in the other. He might have been sixty one years of age, but nothing daunted Doolan when he was acting in defence of his own family. He roared, “What the hell are you men about?”
There came no reply from any of the men. Doolan’s wife had also come out of the house and was approaching him from behind. Doolan said, “Get back in the house Sue. I’ll deal with these scamps.”
Susan Doolan ignored this command and went up to her husband, placing her hand on his arm beseechingly, saying, “Lord, come away out of this Mick. You ain’t even carrying your gun.”
Even now, things might well have passed without any bloodshed, if Ezra Doolan, who had also been roused by the gunfire, had not rattled up the casement window of his own bedroom and poked out a sawn-off scattergun that he always kept handy by his bed. He called down at the riders, “You boys throw down your weapons, or I’ll kill every man-jack o’ you!”
Then three things happened in quick succession. Susan Doolan clutched her husband and yelled up at her impetuous son, “Ezra, don’t do it son!” At almost the same instant, Ezra Doolan, fearing that his parents were about to be massacred, let fly with the scattergun, hitting Jed Stone in his side. The third thing to occur was that Jack Armstrong, three parts drunk, tightened his grip automatically on the pistol he held, when he heard the boom of the shotgun. His piece was cocked and went off at once. The ball took Susan Doolan in the face and she fell back at once, mortally wounded.
Realising that their plans had miscarried, the three men on horseback whirled round and rode off into the night, casting away their torches as they went.
Outside the Doolans’ house, the old man was kneeling beside the lifeless body of his wife, sobbing like a little child and talking frantically to Sue, as if by so doing he could ward off the relaisation that she was dead. He said in a low voice, “Come on my love, it’ll be all right, you’ll see. Rouse up, things will be fine. Sue, come now.” His son and daughters had come down the stairs and stood there watching the heart-rending scene; not one of them having the least notion how to deal with such an unexpected situation. None of them had ever seen their father cry or even display much emotion before and the sight was a disturbing one.
Next morning at breakfast, Andrew and Tom noticed that Jack was absent and that his bed did not appear to have been slept in. Their mother said uneasily, “I hope this has naught to do with your pa’s mishap yesterday.” Only Martha Armstrong would have referred to a failed assasination as a “mishap”.
“I don’t believe it’s that, ma,” said Anthony, “I’m telling you, Mrs Doolan seemed not to know anything about the business. I don’t think for a minute that either Mr Doolan or his sons had any part in this.”
“Well then,” said Tom, a little nettled at how much his younger brother appeared to be taken upon himself, “Where do you say Jack might be?”
“I couldn’t say,” replied Anthony, “Drunk maybe?”
“Drunk?” exclaimed Andrew disbelievingly, “Why I never saw the like o’ Jack at holding his liquor. I never seed him set drunk since he was a boy.”
Anthony shrugged. He had his own views on the matter and suspected that Jack would be sleeping in some out of the way place, rather than having been shot down by an ambush-killer.
While they were drinking their coffee, Jack turned up. He had, as Anthony had already guessed, spent the night in the barn; sleeping off the ill-effects of his overindulgence. “You look like hell, man!” was Tom’s greeting, followed almost at once by an apology to his mother, who had turned round, ready to take a tough stance were she to hear any more strong language.
“You talk too much,” was all that Jack had to say, “Any o’ that coffee left?”
It was abundantly clear that something was up, but none of Jack’s brothers felt inclined to push him on the subject; figuring that he would tell them what was going on in his own good time. Not so Martha Armstrong, who said, “I was worried. What ails you, son?”
“It’s nothing, ma. I’m fine.”
“I know that look of yours, Jack Armstrong,” his mother said firmly, “It’s the self-same look you had when you were a little boy and had been at the cookie jar. Now what’s to do? You know I’ll have it out of you, so you might as well tell me now.”
“How’s pa?” asked Jack, still prevaricating.
“He’ll do well enough,” replied his mother, “Now what scrape’ve you been in now?”
Jack sat there for a spell, supping his coffee, before saying, “I went by the Doolan place last night. Me and a couple o’ others. There was shooting.”
There was consternation and Jack’s brothers all began asking him questions at once. Their mother banged a pot lid on the stove to quell the hubbub and then spoke. “Anybody hurt? Killed?”
“One of the boys I was riding with caught a load of buckshot, but we picked it out after we left.” His mother’s eye was still fixed upon him and so slowly and unwillingly, Jack Amstrong continued, “I think I might o’ shot somebody as well.”
It took a while to extract a full and complete account of the episode from Jack and when they had done so, his mother said, “Not a word of this to your pa. I don’t want him frettin’. You boys had best make sure that you set a watch for trouble. If Michael Doolan’s still living, he’ll be on the vengeance trail for this piece of work. If it was Susan…”
Something which all four of the brothers marked was that their ma wasted no time in recriminations or anything of the sort. For her, the case was clearcut. One of her boys was in trouble and she would stand up for him come hell or high water. She expected no less of the rest of them. This was one of those occasions when they would all have to pull together. There would be time later to castigate her son for his folly, but that time most decidedly was not now. She walked over to Jack and laid her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at his mother and she said, “What we goin’ to do with you, boy? You always been a torment to me.” She smiled as she spoke these harsh words, which took the sting from them. Then she said in a louder voice, “You boys better be ready for trouble. Your pa ain’t fit to handle it, so it falls to the four of you.”
Tom cleared his throat and said hesitantly, “Pa said as we wasn’t to mix Anthony up in any of our business. He was most particular ‘bout it.”
Martha Armstrong said softly, “Anthony one of the family, same as you boys. He’ll do what’s necessary. Don’t you worry about what pa says for now. Just recollect that I still have my stick near at hand and be sure to do what I say. Now get along with you all, I have to tend to pa.”
When Susan Doolan had taxed her husband the previous evening with ordering, or being concerned in, or having any part in, the shooting of Seth Armstrong; he had been genuinely perplexed. He and his former partner might be at outs and not on good terms, but the idea that he would try and kill his former friend was a strange one. His wife could see at once that he was telling the truth and so the matter was left there. When the Doolans had retired that night, it had been agreed that Michael Doolan would, notwithstanding the tension between the families, ride over to the Armstrong house the following day and offer his sympathy. He also determined to find out if any of his men might have had a hand in the affair.
Tim Hogan had been mightily ticked off to be knocked down in the street by a sawn-off runt dressed like a Sunday School Superintendent. On the way back to the Doolan place, Mr Doolan happened to mention that the young man who had assaulted him was one of the Armstrong brothers. After getting back to the big house, Hogan and his partner Trent Barker, went out to collect a couple of horses which were waiting for them on the other side of the river. Barker told the men they collected the horses from all about how Hogan had been beaten up by a fellow half his size. They found this funny and began twitting him about it, whereupon he lost his patience; which of course provoked even more amusement.
It should be said that Hogan was a man who took himself very seriously and if there was one thing in this world that he could not stamach, it was folk making a game of him. On the way back with the horses, Tim Hogan told Barker in no uncertain terms to watch his step and then he dug his spurs viciously in his own mount’s flanks and headed over the hill in the direction of the Armstrongs’ place.
As he approached the rise of ground that separated the fields laying alongside the river from the corrals and buildings of the Armstrong house, Hogan dismounted and pulled the rifle from the scabbard at front of his saddle and then walked slowly up the incline. It was a thousand to one against seeing the fellow who had humiliated him, but it was surely worth a look. He could scarcely believe his luck when he came to the crest of the little hill and saw both the man who had knocked him down and also the man whose actions were always frustrating the profits of the family for whom he worked.
Seth Armstrong and his little son, who had, according to Mr Doolan, been away at college, were just standing there, chatting. The fury which had been simmering away in Hogan’s breast came welling up at the sight of the man who had attacked him and he knelt down and raised his rifle. You could say many harsh and unpleasant things about Tim Hogan, but you would have to concede that he was a superb shot. Had it not been for the slight gust of wind which blew just as he squeezed the trigger, there could be no doubt that Anthony Armstrong would have dropped dead on the spot. At getting on for five hundred yards though, which is the distance which Hogan was from his target, that little puff of spring air was all that was needed to cause his ball to veer off by a foot or so; burying itself instead in the chest of the elder Mr Armstrong.
The firing of the shot at the man who had knocked him into the dust back at Parson’s End acted as a catharsis on Hogan and although he saw immediately that he had hit the father, rather than the son; the fact that he had shot somebody assuaged his feelings. He threw himself to the turf and wriggled back the way he had come, taking great care not to show himself above the skyline as it could be seen from down below. Then he jumped on his horse and headed back to the Doolan spread; his good humour entirely restored.
So it was that the man who was ultimately to blame for the tragic events which befell not only the Armstrong and Doolan families, but also various other people; that man had been motivated by nothing more important than a temporary loss of face outside a bar-room.
While the Armstrong brothers were preparing to defend themselves against the attack which they felt would not be long in coming after Jack’s foolish adventure the previous night, Michael Doolan was laying out his wife of thirty eight years. His daughters, grief-stricken as they were, offered to undertake the job, but Doolan would hear nothing of the sort. He turfed them all out of the large room at the front of the house and laid Sue’s body upon the mahogany dining table. The bullet had wrought havoc with her face, which was in consequence a hideous sight to behold. After fetching a basin and mopping away the congealed blood and fragments of white bone where her cheek-bone had been shattered, he sponged down her hair, trying to make it as soft as it had been in life.
When he had finished cleaning up the wreckage of his poor dead wife’s face, Michael Doolan went upstairs to choose an outfit for Susan. He couldn’t bear to think of her being buried in her nightgown, looking so homely and mundane. The best dress Susan owned was the one she wore on her infrequent visits to church. This he carried down to where his wife was laying. From the kitchen came the sound of sobbing. His daughters were taking it hard and Doolan knew that he would have to send them away for a while, until he had cleared everything up and settled matters to his own satisfaction.
Michael Doolan had no idea about undergarments and the like, but he figured that Sue would understand that and not hold it against him. He eased the nightgown over her head; the rigour having left her by now. Then he carefully lifted her arms and somehow manoeuvred her into the dress. It was enough for now and Doolan knew that if he continued much longer at the task, he would break down in tears again. That was the last thing he needed to be doing at this time. All else apart, the girls needed his strength and Ezra and Joe would have to be instructed in the steps necessary to be revenged upon the cowards who had gunned down their mother.
When he entered the kitchen, the girls were seated at the table, weeping; just as he had suspected would be the case. Ezra was standing by the window. From the redness in the boy’s eyes, Doolan guessed that he too had shed tears that morning. Well, there was no shame in that. He said, “Katy, why don’t you and your sister start thinking about getting yourselves washed and tidied up. We can’t be mourning all the day long. Go along now.”
The brisk manner that Doolan adopted with the girls acted on them like a tonic and they obediently stood up, preparatory to going up the stairs and making themselves ready to face the coming day. As they left, both Katy and Maire stopped to kiss their father on the cheek. When they had left the room, Doolan went over and quietly closed the door, so that he and his son would not be overheard.
“Where’s that brother of your’n?” asked Doolan of his son.
“He said as he’d be back today, pa. You want I should go hunt for him?”
“No, that ain’t needed. We can start layin’ our plans before he gets here.”
“Plans? You mean the… the funeral and such?”
“That too,” said Doolan, “Yes, one of us’ll have to ride into town and talk to the minister. But that weren’t what I had in mind.”
“What then?” asked Ezra.
“Why boy, I needs must spell it out? You value your ma’s life so cheap as you’d let those mangy dogs that gunned her down go free?”
Sheriff Brewster Bates had nominal responsibility for maintaining law and order in Parson’s End, but it was not by way of being an especially arduous job. Bates collected local taxes, made sure that drunkeness was discouraged and that new buildings were not erected willy nilly all over the place. There was little crime in the town and what there was was, as a rule, settled by personal means, rather than by telling tales to the law. Sheriff Bates turned a blind eye to many things, but as the town seemed to prosper under this benign neglect, nobody was much bothered. Brewster Bates had been voted in for the last five years, largely on account of nobody else felt inclined to take on the role of sheriff. He was a good-natured and idle man, who had turned fifty that year. His only aim in life was to continue in his present post until he was too old to be able to walk or see.
Just lately, there had been a fly in the ointment of Sheriff Bates’ previously tranquil professional existence. This had been the alarming increase in raids by the Zuni and Navaho Indians. Some people had been killed, but the main thing was the loss of livestock; principally horses. It was rumoured that if things got any worse, then the army might send a unit to the area to supress such lawlessness. This was a development that Bates was excessively anxious to avoid at all costs. Brewster Bates was nobody’s fool and he had, almost from the moment that he took up his post, been taking money from both the Armstrongs and the Doolans. He had understood that this was to ensure that he turned a blind eye to the altering of brands and suchlike. Lately though, since the virtual collapse of the cattle trade in this part of the country, Bates had an uncomfortable feeling that both Seth Armstrong and Mick Doolan were up to other things.
The day after Anthony Armstrong arrived in Parson’s End, Brewster Bates was sitting in his office, re-reading a letter which had come in on the mail coach the previous day. It was ten in the morning and too early for fretting about such things, but Bates knew that he was going soon to be compelled to have a serious word with both the Armstrongs and the Doolans and tell them to scale back their activities; at least for a while. The letter in his hand was from the commander of a fort in New Mexico and copies had apparently been sent to all law enforcement officers in the northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico. The gist of it was that unless the civilian sheriffs and marshals could keep a lid on the depredations which were now becoming widespread, then a cavalry column would soon be conducting a sweep of the area. This was far from being an attractive prospect. Nobody wanted a bunch of damned soldiers poking their snouts into everybody’s business.
It was while Sheriff Brewster was engrossed in this missive, that the door opened and in walked two grim-faced men. He recognised immediately Mick Doolan and his son Ezra and they looked in no pleasant mood. “Morning gentlemen,” said Bates, “How can I be helping you all?”
“Cut the small talk, Bates,” said the elder Mr Doolan roughly, “I ain’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.”
“Well then, what can I do for you?”
“You can issue a warrant for the Armstrongs on a charge of murder and conspiracy to murder.” was the surprising reply. Sheriff Bates knew then that his life had just got a whole lot more complicated and that having the cavalry riding through town was likely to be among the least of his troubles.