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7 8 I n early January 1877 Susan received a note from Elizabeth that seemed to foreshadow a somber time ahead. Elizabeth, who was still living in Las Vegas, informed her sister that several of the children were sick in bed with smallpox. In fact, the disease had first appeared in late 1876, and it raged across much of southeastern New Mexico throughout 1877. Richard Brewer, a friend of the McSweens who had asked Alex for legal help in his battle against Lawrence Murphy, was among the first to succumb to the disease in Lincoln County. He did so before Christmas. The muscular, robust rancher and farmer, whose hand was once described as a “great paw,” languished for weeks with the high fever, hallucinations, and exhaustion typical of smallpox. His aging parents, who had traveled from Wisconsin to New Mexico earlier that year to visit, ended up nursing him back to health instead of enjoying the Christmas festivities together. Fortunately, Brewer, like the Shield children, eventually recovered from the devastating disease.1 In early April Jimmy Dolan rode into Lincoln and announced that the Indian agent was reporting smallpox among the Mescaleros. A few weeks after that, John Chisum fell victim. He was personally leading a bevy of his ranch hands against a group of Seven Rivers ranchers, whom he blamed for the escalating thefts of his cattle, when the disease hit. On April 20 Chisum and his cowboys engaged in a shootout at Hugh Beckwith’s ranch, and when they could not force Beckwith and his companions out, the Chisum men laid siege to the place. He firmly believed that Beckwith and eldest son John comprised the center of the rustling operation. Now, following C ha p t e r F i v e throwing down the gauntlet Throwing Down the Gauntlet S 7 9 several frustrating years of cattle losses at the hands of rustlers, Chisum was determined to shut them down once and for all. A few days after the gunfight, however, Chisum abruptly called off the offense, complaining that he did not feel well. He headed home, and by the time he arrived back at his ranch, John was so ill he could barely move. He spent weeks in bed with smallpox, and ultimately the disease left him badly pockmarked. With his usual wit, Chisum later told women that “although he had lost some of his good looks he still retained his winning ways.” By July newspapers reported smallpox across the Pecos River valley and Seven Rivers country. Neither of the McSweens seems to have succumbed to the epidemic of 1877.2 As yet unaffected by the disease, John Tunstall spent much of his time in early 1877 exploring cattle country. He searched for land to buy and good deals for the purchase of a herd. Alex frequently rode beside him on these exploratory missions. On one such trip north to the town of Belen, which was near the growing community of Albuquerque, the men noted “smallpox in every house.” Determined to take precautions, Tunstall was inoculated in Belen but wrote to his father that “it did not take.” Whether Alex followed suit and received an inoculation, had contracted the disease earlier in life and was therefore immune, or simply decided to brave out the epidemic is unknown. The same is true of his wife. If Susan had come down with smallpox as a child, it appears that the disease left no scars on her face.3 Susan soon realized that the plans John and Alex were devising included a head-on challenge to the House. John resolved to outbid Murphy and Dolan for government contracts and seduce customers out from under their noses. In a letter to London, John explained how he intended to do so and why. “Rings,” he said, controlled everything that made money in New Mexico. In addition to the growing influence of the Santa Fe Ring, there was an Indian ring that siphoned government funds intended for reservations , an army ring that dominated sales and trade to the forts, a Roman Catholic ring, which attempted to maintain its hierarchical monopoly, a cattle ring, and even a so-called “horsethieves” ring, John maintained. He would focus his energies on breaking the influence of the current ring in Lincoln and creating his own ring to dominate the economy. The ultimate goal, Tunstall said, was to “get half of every dollar that is made in the county by anyone.”4 To accomplish such a...

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