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The British legation took up the matter of Tunstall's death, and the slow-moving governmental wheels at Washington began to revolve. A United States indemnity was paid for Tunstall's life. Mrs. McSween, meantime, kept up her work in the local courts.
Dad Peppin, known as the "Murphy sheriff" by the McSween faction, lived out his life on his little holding at the edge of Lincoln placita. He died in 1905. His rival, John Copeland, died in 1902. The street of Lincoln, one of the bloodiest of its size in the world, is silent. Another generation is growing up.
Heretofore no such thing as divorce had been known in that part of the world; but courts and lawyers were now present, and it occurred to Mrs. Scholland to have a divorce. She sent to Mr. McSween for legal counsel, and for a time lived in the McSween house. Now came news of the death, in Germany, of Colonel Emil Fritz. His brother, Charlie Fritz, undertook to look up the estate.
Dick Brewer, Tunstall's foreman, was now leader of the McSween fighting men. McSween, of course, supplied him with color of "legal" authority. He was appointed "special constable." Neither party had difficulty in obtaining all the legal papers required. Each party was presently to have a sheriff of its own.
He wished to be secured against this advancement and reimbursed as well for his expenses, which, together with his fee, amounted to a considerable sum. Moreover, the German Minister enjoined McSween from turning over any of this money, as there were other heirs in Germany. Major Murphy owed McSween some money.
On August 23, 1873, in Atchison, Kansas, Susan Hummer was married to Alexander A. McSween, a young lawyer fresh from the Washington university law school of St. Louis. McSween was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and was educated in the first place as a Presbyterian minister. He was a man of good appearance, of intelligence and address, and of rather more polish than the average man.
To keep the McSween men inside their fortifications, Peppin had three men posted on the mountain side, whence they could look down directly upon the top of the houses, as the mountain here rises up sharply back of the narrow line of adobe buildings.
The murder of Sheriff Brady left the country without even the semblance of law; but each party now took steps to set up a legal machinery of its own, as cover for its own acts. In a quasi-election, the McSween faction instituted John Copeland as their sheriff. The Murphy faction held that Copeland never qualified as sheriff. He lived with McSween part of the time.
Meantime, there was at Lincoln an accommodating justice of the peace, John P. Wilson, who was ready to give either faction any sort of legal paper it demanded. Dick Brewer, Billy the Kid, and nearly a dozen others of the first McSween posse started to the lower country, where lived a good many of Murphy's friends, small cow men and others.
McSween, ex-minister, lawyer, honest or dishonest instigator, innocent or malicious cause and one may choose his adjectives in this matter of all these bloody scenes, now sat in the house, his head bowed in his hands, the picture of foreboding despair. His nerve was absolutely gone. No one paid any attention to him. His wife, the actual leader, was far braver than he. The Kid was the commander.
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