It had been some four or five years since he had been on the Doolan spread and Anthony Armstrong looked about him with great interest. After his brothers had told him about the problems with cattle, it had drawn his attention to the fact that there were fewer steers around than had been the case before he went off to war four years earlier. Now, riding across the Doolan’s land, he could see the same thing. Few cattle, but few horses too. He hadn’t asked his brothers where they were keeping the horses that they were taking. He would have to look into that when he got home.
The Doolan’s house was not as well-appointed or large as that in which the Armstrongs lived, but it was substantial enough. When he rode into the yard surrounding the house, there was no sign of either Michael Doolan or his sons; Ezra and Joe. There was a small knot of men branding a horse in a corral which ran alongside the barn. When these men became aware of his presence, they stopped what they were doing and two of them walked over, presumably to ask him his business. Anthony half expected to see the fellow Hogan, who had knocked down in the street in Parson’s End, but found that neither of the men who came to talk to him were Hogan.
“You a preacher or somthin‘?” was the first question addressed to him. Anthony Armstrong, recollecting that the purpose of his mission was a pacific one, did not rise to the bait, but instead paused a second or two before replying.
“I’m no preacher. Why would you think so?”
“You sure dress like a minister. Well, what’re you after?”
“I’m looking to speak to Michael Doolan. He knows me well enough. Is he about?”
On learning that this sober and well-spoken stranger was apparently an acquaintance of their boss, the man to whom Anthony was speaking grew a little more polite. He said, “The boss went over to Parson’s End on business. We don’t rightly know when he’ll be back.”
“What about Joseph or Ezra? Are they anywhere to be found?”
“They’re away as well.”
Had the matter been less urgent, then the young man would most probably have ridden off and returned at a later date, but this was life and death. There had been one shooting; he had to make sure that there wasn’t another. That being so, he dismounted and said pleasantly, “I reckon I’ll just wait until one or the other of them shows up, in that case.”
A look of alarm came into the faces of the two men standing on the other side of the fence surrounding the corral. The one to whom he had been talking said, “Hey, you can’t do that!”
“Can I not? I’m paying a friendly visit to a neighbour. Who are you to say who can come and visit Mr Doolan?”
As he watched their faces, Anthony saw comprehension slowly flooding into their brains. “Neighbor? Where you from?”
“My name’s Anthony Armstrong and I live over yonder.” He waved in the direction of his home. “I’ve been away for a spell and now I’m back, I’m making a few visits.”
The other three men who had been clustered around the horse they were branding, had also stopped work and were standing watching him. It took no great art to read their minds and figure out what was going through them. First off was where these men probably knew about the shooting at him and his father. It could even be that one of them had actually pulled the trigger. Second, that horse that they were branding was stolen, for a bet; which was making them nervous. Then again, they could see that Anthony wasn’t carrying a gun, which meant that there was no question of goading him into a duel, so that they could be rid of him that way. Lastly, of course, they didn’t wish to take upon themselves the responsibility for killing or even provoking a fight with somebody, right on their boss’ doorstep, until they had direct instructions. Old Mr Doolan was the very Devil when he was roused.
Not withstanding their doubts, the five men in the corral were moving forward in a way that suggested that they might start something anyway, simply because thay didn’t have the the sense to deal with an unaccustomed situation without resorting to violence. Anthony prepared himself mentally for a fight and was wondering if it would be limited to fists and boots or if one of these men would try to kill him with a knife, when there came a shout from the direction of the big house. It was a woman’s voice and she called, “Anthony Armstrong, ain’t you going to come and greet me? It’s been a good long while since you came by here.”
He turned and saw that Mr Doolan’s wife Susan was hurrying towards him, a broad smile of greeting upon her plump and good-natured face. She gave a baleful look at the five men who were moving in on Anthony and said, “You scallawags get on with your work now. And if you see Mr Armstrong here coming to visit, you best be as polite as you know how, or you’ll have me to answer to!” With that, she turned and led Anthony into the house.
When she had seated him comfortably in the kitchen and set a pot of coffee on the stove to boil, Mrs Doolan said, “It must be four years now since we’ve seen you here. Too long.”
It was difficult to know how to respond to such an opening, because Anthony guessed that Michael Doolan’s wife would naturally take her husband’s side in any dispute between the two families. The stout woman fussing about at the range must have read his mind, for she said, “Oh, I know that your pa and my Mick, Mr Doolan I should say, have their differences, but you and Ezra were always good friends and it grieved me to see us be sundered like that. Why Martha, your ma that is, and me, time was when we was like sisters. In and out of each other’s company every chance we had.”
“To tell you the truth ma’am,” said Anthony slowly and with an embarrassed air, “I don’t even know what happened to end our friendship. Only that pa and Mr Doolan had some species of falling out.”
“It was something and nothing. Your pa reckoned as Mr Doolan had registered a brand without telling him. You know they were more or less partners at one time. One thing led to another, there was high words and the upshot was that the two of ‘em stopped speaking. And then Mick, Mr Doolan, told me and the boys to give you all a wide berth into the bargain.”
“Pretty much the self-same thing happened at our house.”
“Well, it was no affair of yours, at any rate. It’s good to see you setting there. How is your ma? I see her odd times in town, but we don’t generally speak. Just kind o’ nod at each other, like we was practically strangers.”
“She’s fine,” said Anthony, “Much the same as usual.”
“She as tough on you boys as ever?”
Recollecting how she had swiped Jack around the head with the soup ladle, Anthony had to smother a grin. “She’s still tough enough, ma’am, yes.”
Seeing the laughter that the youngster was suppressing, gave Susan Doolan to hope that she could share with him a story that had gone round Parson’s End the previous Fall. She said, “I suppose you mightn’t have heard how she went for your brother Jack this winter gone?”
“Went for him? How so?”
“This’d be maybe three or four months back. Jack was supposed to be doing something or other, I don’t mind what, but your ma she couldn’t find him nohow. Somehow, she found out as he was at play in the Lucky Lady. Believe it or believe it not, Martha, she walked five miles to town, a carrying with her a hickory stick. Well Jack, he’s at the gaming table and playing cards for high stakes, when in walks your ma. She marches straight up to where those boys are playing and she lands that hickory stick ‘cross Jack’s shoulders. The dealer, he says to Martha, ‘What are you about you old hagling? We’s playing poker here, this ain’t a fit place for women to be.’ Your ma, she didn’t say nothing at all to that man, but she ups and whacks him round the head with the hickory stick and would you believe it, lays him out stone cold. Then she grabs your brother by the ear and marches him out the saloon, with him saying, ‘Ma, you’re shaming me!’”
So ridiculous was the story and so exactly like his mother, that Anthony threw back his head and let out a bellow of laughter. Then, wondering if he wasn’t in some way being disloyal to his family, tried to make his face straight again.
Mrs Doolan said, “Mind, I don’t think that Jack was shamed in any way. I doubt there was a man in the territories that durst have interfered with your ma that night, not with her on the rampage and brandishing that hickory stick.”
It was as plain as day to Anthony Armstrong that after sitting like this and laughing with Susan Doolan, that he couldn’t have any sort of showdown with her husband that day. He said, “Well, it’s sure been good to visit with you again, ma’am. I’m sorry things have turned out as they have. You might tell Mr Doolan that I came here because I’m hopeful of making the peace between him and my pa.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him, son.”
“Katy and Maire not around, I suppose?” asked Anthony, a little wistfully.
“They gone into town with they brother.”
“Well, be sure to tell them that I said ‘hallo’. You might say to your husband that I want to avoid any further trouble between us and that my pa is still in the land of the living yet.”
Mrs Doolan cocked her head to one side, saying, “What’s this? Why shouldn’t your pa be in the land of the living. What ain’t you told me?”
“Ma’am, maybe your husband didn’t know about it, but somebody shot my pa this day. He’s laying abed at our house this very minute.”
Her hand went to her mouth and the colour blanched from her face. Susan Doolan said, “Lord a mercy, you don’t say so. Tell me this is naught of my husband’s doing?”
“I don’t know whose doing it is, Mrs Doolan, but I’m afeared as there’ll be murder done if we don’t stop this feud right this minute. Please tell your husband I came by to see him and that I meant well by him.”
What might have been an amusing story for the folks in and around Parson’s End was anything but likely to raise a smile from Jack Armstrong. He still burned with humiliation every time he recollected that fearful scene in the saloon, with his mother marching him out the place like an errant schoolboy; and him twenty eight years of age.
He had always had a partiality and weakness for intoxicating liquor, but since that frightful incident, just before the Christmas of 1866, Jack had taken to drinking alone, which is generally a bad sign in a man of any age; but is liable to lead to particular mischief in a younger person. Although it was in general seen as a fine, manly quality to possess, it was Jack’s ability to “hold his liquor” as the saying goes, which provided the spark which set the powder train burning that week.
If, after getting liquored up, Jack Armstrong had been the kind of fellow to reel all over the shop, so that everybody could see where he was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, then more note might have been taken of the heavy drinking habit into which he had slipped between Christmas and Easter. As it was, his trips to the barn, where he kept a flagon of poteen, passed unremarked and he was frequently the worse for wear by the time he came to his bed.
That evening, on the day that his younger brother had returned from college, Jack was seething with fury. Although he loved Anthony dearly, it had always seemed to him that both his mother and father favoured their youngest son over him, Tom and Andrew. Who in the hell did Anthony think he was, riding off like that to the Doolans to act as peacemaker? That role should surely have fallen to either Jack or Tom; the two eldest brothers.
Then there was the shooting of his father. Although it looked like his pa would live, it was not to be thought of that those responsible for this cowardly attempt at assassination should escape quite unscathed. At the very least, they should be warned off and given to understand that any further action of that sort would bring down the lightning upon their heads. Peacemaking? What those skunks needed was a good scare to put the fear of God into them and ensure that they would not essay any scurvy tricks of that sort in the future.
When Anthony returned from the Doolans, he gave out that there was not likely to be any further attack on them or their property and had told them the gist of his conversation with Mrs Doolan. Once again, that cursed story made even his own brothers chuckle. Well, if there were really people living thereabouts who thought that Jack Armstrong was a figure of fun, then they were in for an almighty shock before the night was out; that was all. He would show everybody, once for all, that he was not a man to be taken lightly.
It was getting on for midnight when Jack saddled up and rode north. In a pack affixed to the back of the saddle were some long branches with cotton wound round the ends and tacked on tight, a can of lamp oil and three empty, hessian sugar sacks with two holes cut in each. In addition to this material, there was a carbine held in a scabbard at front of the saddle and Jack also had his pistol slapping against his thigh.
Three miles north of the Armstrong house was thirty acres of land farmed, after a fashion, by a man called Jed Stone. Stone’s farming activities were by way of being a sideline, some said a blind, for his real business. This consisted in part of moon-shining and running guns to the Indians, and also acting as custodian of the horses which the Armstrong brothers acquired from various sources. Stone and the man he shared his cabin with were required to do nothing more taxing than keep the livestock which Jack, Tom and Andrew brought to their land, penned up in a little blind gulley on their land for a week or two at a time; making sure that they were watered and fed. There was a considerable risk entailed in this, for if Jed and his friend Albert were found in possession of the animals by their owners, they would most likely be strung up on the spot. He was accordingly well paid for his services. It was to Jed Stone’s home that Jack was riding for that night.
Fortunately, there was a full moon, which reduced the chances of Jack’s horse putting her foot in a hole and breaking a leg. She was an intelligent beast and her native caution made up a little for the slightly befuddled state of the man riding her. At any rate, she contrived to get her owner safely to Jed and Albert’s cabin. As Jack Armstrong reined in, Jed emerged, having heard the hoof beats. “Oh, it’s you!” he said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Of the three brothers with whom he dealt, Jed Stone found Jack the least pleasant company.
“I want some help from you fellows,” said Jack, with no preamble, “Got a little job wants doing.”
“At this time o’ night? Can’t it wait ‘til mornin’?”
“Listen Stone, you want to keep taking our cash for just keeping a few horses out here, you best lend a hand this night. Else we and you are like to part company, you get what I’m a saying?”
Two things were crystal clear to Jed Stone. The first was that Jack had been drinking and was in an ugly mood. Second was where the man was quite capable if irritated, of terminating the business arrangement which the Armstrongs had with Jed and Albert. This would be the deuce of a nuisance and so Jed found it politic to invite the other into his home to talk over what he had in mind.
Once Jack was comfortably ensconced in the log cabin which Jed and Albert called home, he outlined his plan and from the first, both Jed Stone and Albert Donague had a premonition of disaster. There seemed little possibility of talking Jack out of his mad plan though and so, rather than risk losing their income from the Armstrongs, they agreed to go along with what was suggested.
“I had about enough of those Doolans,” announced Jack, when he had been furnished with a glass of the latest batch of poteen distilled by Jed, “Tonight’s the night that we put a scare into ‘em.”
“How so?” asked Jed.
“Out on the back of my saddle, I got some stuff. Wait up, while I fetch it in.” Jack Armstrong went out to his horse, giving Albert and Jed the opportunity to exchange glances and roll their eyes meaningfully. When he returned to the cabin, Jack showed the other two men what he was carrying. First, he handed them the hessian bags with holes cut in them. They looked at these in frank bewilderment.
“What are these for?” asked Albert.
“What are they for? Why you chucklehead, they’re masks. Spook masks.”
“For why? What’re we like to need them for?”
“The Doolan boys have gone off for a few days. It’ll just be Mick and his wife, alone in the house. We’re going to give ‘em a fright, is all. See here, I got torches as well. We’re going to ride up to the house and just set on our horses in front. Then we’ll fire in the air a couple o’ times, kind of let ‘em know we’re there. We won’t say nothing, just sit there holding our torches and them not able to see our faces. Then we ride out.”
Neither Albert nor Jed could see any sense at all in the projected enterprise, but nor could they see that it would do much harm either. If this was to be the limit of what Jack Armstrong wanted of them and if it would keep him sweet; then it was worth the trouble. Jed said, “You take oath as there’s no more to the matter than that? We’re just going to fire in the air and sit outside they house, looking menacing. You ain’t a fixin’ for to kill any of them or nothin’ of that sort?”
“I give you both my word,” said Jack solemnly, “I just want to warn ‘em to stay clear of us in the future. Even without they see our faces, they’ll know what it’s all about. I’ll warrant they’ll take the message sure enough”