The introductory scene of "Snap Decision" shows Matt coming upon one of two outlaws he has been tracking for two weeks. The man is Ray Gilcher, an old friend. As they are preparing to return to Dodge, Gilcher remarks that it won't be so bad being in Matt's jail as they'll have time to talk about the old days like "the time at Chickamauga when you saved the captain's life." Matt responds, "I remember I never would have gotten out alive if it wasn't for you. That's somethin' you don't forget." In an ironic twist, Matt shoots and kills Gilcher and rides into Dodge with an anguished look on his face and Gilcher's body at his side. This story begins with Matt's thoughts on that long ride back to Dodge.
Disclaimer: No ownership, no profit. Just love and nostalgia for these wonderful characters.
Spoilers: The Mission, Kimbro, Honey Pot, Cara, The Cousin, Long, Long Trail
Rating: PG13
At All Costs
Chapter One
September 19, 1863
Corporal Matthew Dillon lowered his aching and exhausted body onto the soft bank of the blood-darkened Chickamauga Creek. Night had fallen hours before, and with it the seemingly incessant firing of the guns had finally ended. The night was silent except for an intermittent breeze rustling the leaves of the old oak trees. Even the forest creatures had fled this place, this little part of hell in north Georgia.
The shadowed faces of fellow soldiers lying around him reflected the somber mood of the day's bloody battle. Hushed conversations varied in topic, but the word "future" was not prominent in many of them.
The young corporal stared out across the creek at Poe Field where the division leaders, including his own company commander, Captain John Barker, could be seen walking in and out of a makeshift tent next to one of the numerous campfires that lined the countryside. The stoic countenance of General George Thomas indicated the seriousness of the next day's outcome to the Union cause, and Dillon absently reached to pull his gunbelt and scabbard closer to his tattered blanket before lying back and closing his eyes.
But the desperately needed sleep would not come and Dillon lay there, his usually precise and orderly mind randomly sifting through the years of his young life. Twenty-three years in all...assuming he made it to that birthday two days away...an eternity almost, given what had just passed and what surely lay ahead.
Never one to dwell on the past, he was surprised to find his mind settling momentarily on other birthdays he had known. Few in his life had been marked as special occasions. If truth be told, the only really happy birthday he could remember was the year he turned seven and received a pony from his parents. He named the paint Tortilla and for a while the boy and pony were great companions. But then his father was killed. Shortly after that his mother died. And things changed forever. Gone were the happy, carefree days of riding Tortilla. The pony was sold and the child was sent to live on a neighboring ranch. Oh, they took care of him and saw to it that he went to school and that his physical needs were met, but young Matty had ceased to be a child. The shy, quiet boy did both a man's and a woman's work on the ranch--breaking horses, branding cattle, plucking chickens and cooking. Even now the thought of his own son-of-a-gun stew could put a smile on his face and a hunger in his belly.
Becoming aware that the hushed conversations around him had trailed off, Dillon rolled onto his stomach and willed the rustling leaves and gently flowing creek to lull him to sleep.
Once again sleep proved elusive. This time his wandering mind settled on his first job as a lawman. Thinking back, he realized that even with his tremendous height, he hadn't fooled Adam Kimbro one bit when he approached him the day of his 17th birthday, saying he was nearly 19 and wanted to become a lawman. In spite of the lie, Kimbro liked what he saw in the the quiet, gangly youth and took him on.
Lost in thoughts of his past, the young corporal finally drifted off in a restless sleep.
September 20, 1863
Two hours before sunrise Dillon opened his eyes and rolled onto his back. Taking a deep breath of the crisp September air, he rubbed his eyes and stretched his long, muscular arms over his head. He stood to strap on his gunbelt and scabbard and then reached into his haversack for the remains of his rations--salt pork and hardtack. Needing coffee badly, he walked toward the nearest campfire where a few of the men were playing poker.
"You guys been at this game all night?" Dillon asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Young Henry answered first, "Nah, we been talkin' mostly 'til Ray here got an itch to lose his pay to me." The boy of 19 grinned devilishly and looked over at the older man to his left.
Matt broke his hardtack into three pieces and put the smallest one into his coffee to soften it. He continued to watch as the biscuit turned darker as it absorbed the black liquid. He walked to the fire to watch the card game and began eating what would be his only meal that day.
Chapter Two
When Captain Barker asked for two cavalry troopers to scout the area, Corporals Gilcher and Dillon jumped up to accept the challenge. Mounting their horses and heading toward the direction of LaFayette Road, they rode in companionable silence for several minutes.
Gilcher, by far the more gregarious of the two, was the first to speak, "Not much like Arizona, is it?"
"Nope," was Dillon's monosyllabic reply.
"Well, I guess we all knew it woudn't be easy when we signed up, but I didn't expect this. I've never been so tired, so sore, so hot, so cold in my life. And I don't mind tellin' ya, I'm damned scared, too. You scared, Matt?"
"Yup," came the reply from the neighboring horseman.
"You ever gonna say anything?" Gilcher asked as they wound their way through the thicket of trees and out onto LaFayette Road.
"Hmmm, I think you about covered it...tired, sore, hot, cold, scared. Oh, don't forget wet what with those seventeen straight days of rain on the march from Murfreesboro. Yeah, I think that about covers it," Dillon answered in a tone somewhere between derision and amusement.
"What makes you such a good soldier, Matt?" You never complain. You don't get mad. You ride longer, fight harder, sleep less than any man here except for the captain."
"Well...the way I figure it, I signed on to do a job and complainin' won't change things none. Sure, I'd like more food and better workin' conditions, but it's not gonna happen. We swore to help preserve the Union at all costs, and I guess all those comforts we're doin' without are part of 'the cost.'
"Ya ever think you and me'd be preservin' the Union back when we were runnin' cattle down along the border? Me and you and Ben Stack...cowboyin' all day and raisin' hell all night. Yeah, Matt, those were some good years."
"Guess I never thought much about it then. Guess I didn't think about a lot of things back then," Dillon mused soberly.
"Unh, unh...I wouldn't say that exactly. Seems you thought a lot about that cute little thing down in Yuma--Cora, Carrie..."
"Cara," Dillon replied with a grin. "Yeah, she sure was a sweet little thing, wasn't she?"
"Well, now, you'd be knowin' more about that than I would, Matt."
Gilcher was about to harass his taciturn friend a bit more, but his words were drowned by the piercing sound of a Rebel yell. Reining in their horses, Dillon and Gilcher moved quickly off the road and back into the protective covering of the forest. Despite the dense overgrowth, both men could see that the Confederate forces had rearranged their position during the night and were preparing to attack. Also, there were more of them than had been there the night before. Stretching to his full height, Dillon stood in his stirrups and, bringing the field glasses to his eyes, scanned the scene ahead. The tall figure with the long, flowing beard and loose collar-length hair was unmistakable--General James Longstreet and his troops had arrived during the night.
Quickly noting numbers and positions, the two cavalrymen turned their mounts around and rode hard in the direction from which they had just come.
Chapter Three
The dingy gray uniforms of several Confederate soldiers could be seen as Captain Barker and his company of The Army of the Cumberland entered the heavily wooded area occupied by the enemy. From the onset, conditions were less than ideal. The thick forest limited visibility considerably, often to less than the range of a rifle.
Following the directions of their commander, Dillon and the rest of the men drew their weapons and began firing. One after the other the Rebels fell, and the Union troops continued their attack. The Union line stretched for several miles through the woods and for two hours successfully held off the heavy firing of the Confederate guns.
Then, all progress stopped abruptly when General Longstreet and his brigade of men appeared through a small breach in the Union line, launching an all-out assault on Barker and his men.
Unable to advance, the Yankee soldiers took cover where they stood and returned the fire. Dillon dropped behind one of the toppled trees and fired at the approaching gray uniforms. Looking behind him as he reached for more bullets from his belt, Matt saw the captain motioning for a retreat, and he rose to follow.
A small pocket of Union troops continued to fire, apparently unable to hear or see the order to move back. Dillon watched as Barker made his way toward them, motioning and yelling and attempting to get their attention.
Suddenly the captain arched his back and fell forward as an enemy rifle shot hit its mark.
The big corporal ran quickly toward the fallen captain and scooped him up in one motion. Throwing the badly bleeding man across his muscular shoulder, Dillon continued to retreat through the woods with the rest of his company.
Nearly an hour later, as LaFayette Road finally came into view, the fleeing troops slowed to a walk and it was then that they noticed their captain slung across the broad shoulder of an exhausted young corporal.
"Put him down here in the grass."
"Get an ambulance...quick."
Shouts from a variety of men filled the air, and quickly Dillon and Captain Barker were surrounded by battered but concerned troops.
Matt lay on his back in the grass squeezing his eyes tightly shut and trying to suck more oxygen into his burning lungs. His blood-soaked uniform was torn to shreds from where he had turned and twisted in attempts to free himself from the briars and thick undergrowth that had snagged his every step with the captain.
"Dillon, are you hit?" Ray Gilcher was bending over him with concern in his eyes, and he ripped open the front of the blue woolen uniform, exposing the broad, muscular chest of his friend.
"No...but...how's the...captain?" Matt panted, his chest heaving up and down with the effort of speaking.
"I don't know yet. The medic is tendin' him now. He's still alive, and that's more than I can say for most of our company."
Chapter Four
Dodge City, Kansas--Many years later
The knock on the door of room number 21 of the Dodge House was so quiet he might have imagined it. But he had known she would come, and so the light knock was not unexpected. Nor was it unwelcome.
Matt opened the door and looked down at the beautiful redhead who held his heart. Taking her arm, he quickly pulled her into the room. "Kitty, you shouldn't have come here," he scolded with a slight smile. "People will..."
"I don't give a damn what people will think or say. You're my man and you're hurting. I'm here and I'm not leaving."
"Well, I gotta warn you, I'm not gonna be the best company tonight, Kit."
With that statement, Matt threw himself onto the brass bed and began to contemplate the ceiling as if some great wisdom were hidden there.
"I'm not asking you to be, Matt. I'll just sit here real quiet, and you can let me know when you're ready to talk."
Kitty put the wicker basket she carried on the table by the window and settled into the nearest chair to unobtrusively watch her man, the man she loved beyond all reason, struggle with his never-ending battle of law versus loyalty.
Nearly an hour had passed when a toneless voice from the bed said, "He saved my life, Kitty. During the war...I'd be dead if..." Matt's voice trailed off into silence once again.
Kitty put down the worn copy of Leaves of Grass she had been pretending to read and moved across the room to sit on the edge of the bed.
Taking his big hand between her two small ones, she quietly said, "That was a long time ago, Matt. Things happen. People change."
"Doesn't matter. Ray Gilcher saved my life. Now he's dead and I'm the one who killed him."
"Well, I'm eternally grateful to him, too, but you were just doing your job, Matt. You had no choice but to bring him in," she tried to reason.
"Yeah, well, I don't like having a job that forces me to kill people. So I quit," he answered, sounding for all the world like a petulant child.
Silence once again filled the hotel room as Matt continued to stare at the ceiling and Kitty continued to sit on the edge of the bed, her fingers laced through his.
Nearly twelve years with this stubborn, stoic man told her he would reveal his story in his own time, in his own way.
In the meantime, she would wait.
Chapter Five
Dusk gave way to dark, and the tinkling sounds of "Camptown Races" and "Ring, Ring the Banjo" drifted up to the second floor room from the saloons along the street below.
'So I quit.' How long have I waited to hear those words, Kitty asked herself. Why should I argue? Why should I try to change his mind? This could be the key to our "someday." But not like this...I can't let him give up the badge for all the wrong reasons..."
"We were in retreat...second time that day...had been for two, three hours." Kitty was shaken from her reverie by Matt's voice, barely audible in the quiet room.
"The forest...trees...dense overgrowth...kudzu...men...bodies...horses..."
The words were fragmented, slow and halting, but he was talking.
"Horses shouldn't...have been there...too dense...no room to maneuver. But...new captain...insisted..."
Once again the strangled voice stopped, as if the man himself were visualizing sights too terrible to share.
Kitty held her breath and his hand and waited for him to continue.
When he did, his voice was stronger, more sure than it had been before.
"It was getting dark. Between that and the smoke from the muskets...couldn't tell blue coats from gray coats. We could be shooting at the enemy or each other. No way to tell."
In the dim lamplight, Kitty could see small beads of perspiration begin to form on Matt's forehead and upper lip.
"My horse took a shot and went down. I tried to roll clear, but there was no place to go. Horses were coming at me...hooves were pounding inches from me...all around me."
Matt's entire upper body was now bathed in sweat. Kitty gently disentangled herself from the grip he had on her hand and, moving swiftly around to the other side of the bed, she picked up a towel from the washstand and climbed onto the bed. Leaning over her now trembling man, she dried his face and hair and removed his sweat-soaked shirt. Drying his scarred, muscular torso as best she could, she pushed the towel to the bottom of the bed and tugged the big man into her arms.
"It's all right, Cowboy. You're safe here. You don't need to tell me any more if it's too hard for you," she whispered against his damp curls.
"No...I'm all right. Let me finish," he answered as he burrowed his face into the soft fullness of her breasts.
After a few minutes, he turned his head to the side and continued, "My horse tried to get up, but he went down again. This time he fell against me and my right leg was pinned under him. There was no way I could pull myself out from under his dead weight. And with the smoke and the trees...the dark...the guns...the noise...no one could see me or hear me."
Chapter Six
In the oil lamp's faint glow, Kitty could barely discern the facial features of the man in her arms.
But she didn't need to see. She had witnessed his pain many times before. She knew that the expressive blue eyes were squeezed shut, the strong jaw clenched, the soft, warm lips pressed tight. No, she didn't need to see. It didn't matter that this time it wasn't a knife or a bullet, the pain was the same...just as piercing, just as real.
Taking a ragged breath, Matt continued "...see me or hear me. I tried to get up...but...no strength left. Then it got quiet...no more horses...no guns. I knew my unit had gone on without me. I could hear moans near me. I called out, but no one answered...just a few more moans. And then they stopped. As near as I could tell, I was alone."
Tears rolled down Kitty's face as she soothingly rubbed his back and neck. She had an all too vivid image in her mind of this strong, fearless man lying injured and alone in the deep woods, surrounded by the dead and dying, the carcass of his horse pinning him to the forest floor.
Pressing her lips against his brow, she whispered, "Oh, Matt...sweetheart, I'm so sorry. I had no idea...are you sure you want to go on with this?"
He nodded against her breast, and she could feel his heart's frantic beat against her own as the next wave of memory came crashing in.
"I slept...passed out...I don't know exactly what happened. Next thing I knew the sun was high overhead. Flies were biting me...crawlin' all over me. I was so hot...the sun...fever...thirsty...so thirsty. There was a canteen on the pommel, but I couldn't reach it. I was scared, Kitty. I wasn't 'specially afraid to die, but I didn't...then I remembered it was...my birthday. I was 23...and I was damned if I was going to die on my birthday...not like that anyway."
Kitty's tears continued to roll down her face and into the tousled brown curls. She tugged the giant of a man even tighter against her and thanked God for whatever part He had played in saving this man for her.
Chapter Seven
Once again, Matt drew a shaky breath and continued, "To this day I'm not sure what happened after that...there are some gaps...always will be now, I guess. I 'member saying the 'Now I lay me down to sleep' prayer my mother taught me when I was little. Somehow I managed to get my coat off and make a kind of tent out of it to keep the sun and flies off my face. But mostly I drifted in and out of consciousness. The next thing I really recall is Ray Gilcher...standing over me pouring water from the canteen onto my head."
"How did he find you," Kitty wondered. "Didn't he retreat with the rest of your company?"
"Yeah, well, Ray often didn't follow the rules. He was concerned the night before when I didn't report in after the retreat, but there wasn't anything he could do. In the morning the new captain wanted a scout to go out and reconnoiter. Gilcher volunteered. As soon as he was far enough away from the camp, he turned and rode back to where he had last seen me."
"Thank God," was Kitty's heartfelt prayer.
"He used a log for leverage and lifted the horse enough so that I could drag myself out from under. He kinda tied me to his horse so I wouldn't fall off, and he led us back to the camp. I figure he walked about ten miles that day. The company medic looked at me and said the leg would have to come off, but Ray said I needed to go to a real hospital. He took the reins himself and drove that wagon into Chattanooga in some kind of record time...left me at a hospital set up in one of the private homes there. I never saw him again until his picture showed up on wanted posters a couple years ago, but our paths never crossed until about six months ago when he turned up in Kansas."
Kitty smiled down at the exhausted man in her arms. "Now I understand why you feel so strongly about what happened out there on the trail, Matt. Until now, I've only ever heard of Ray Gilcher the horse thief and outlaw. Kinda makes you wonder what makes a man like that go wrong."
"And now, sweetheart, I think it's time for you to get some sleep," she said quietly as she brushed his lips lightly with her own.
"Kitty, you shouldn't have come here, but since you did...and I'm glad you did...will you stay with me tonight?"
"Hmmm, I will if you'll do something for me first."
"I never, ever thought I'd say this to you, Kitty, but I don't think I can...not tonight...I'm just too tired." He grinned at her with the first spark of life she had seen in those blue eyes since he had ridden into Dodge the morning before.
"Oh, you...you're impossible! Not that! I brought some sandwiches with me. Will you eat one of them for me?"
"Sounds like a good idea...did ya bring me something to drink, too?"
"Rye whiskey okay?"
Kitty took the blue and white checked towel from the top of the basket and placed it in the center of the bed. She put two thick ham sandwiches on it and poured two generous glasses of whiskey. Settling back against the headboard she began to nibble on her sandwich, noticing that Matt had already devoured half of his.
"You know, Matt, I'm so sorry about everything that happened...with Gilcher, with you...but I'm glad I got a chance to hear your story. I never knew...never dreamed..."
"It's not just my story, Kitty. Nearly every man of a certain age in Dodge has a war story...Doc, Festus, Moss Grimmick, Sam...all of them. It's just not somethin' we talk about...we fought...we did our job...we went back to our families, our homes. We made lives for ourselves and moved on. We're the lucky ones. Cemeteries all over the north and south are filled with men who preserved the Union with their lives...at all costs...that's what they said we were supposed to do."
Matt finished his sandwich and was eyeing the untouched half of hers. She nodded and he quickly consumed that one, too. "There's another sandwich in the basket if you want more," she said as she slid off the bed.
"Unh, unh...I think I just wanna go to sleep now. I'll have the other one for breakfast," Matt replied as he stripped to just the bottom of his long johns.
Kitty cleared the crumbs and towel from the bed and turned down the patchwork quilt and sheet.
Stepping out of her skirt and pulling her blouse over her head, she saw that Matt had already stretched out in the bed and was watching her through half-closed eyes. Deciding she would sleep in her pantalets and camisole, Kitty reached to take the pins from her hair.
"Let me do that," Matt said in a low voice. Kitty climbed back into the bed and turned so that he could remove the pins, allowing the long red locks to tumble across her back and shoulders. Tossing the hairpins onto the bedside table, he pulled her into his arms and gently, lovingly lowered his mouth to hers.
Kitty returned the kiss and cuddled closer into his embrace.
"You okay?" she asked as her slender fingers tenderly caressed his strong, handsome face.
Matt's clear, gentle eyes smiled along with his lips as he nodded. "I am now...thanks to you. Thank you, Kitty, thank you for being here tonight," he murmured drowsily into the soft curve of her neck.
"Always, Matt, for as long as you want me, I'll be here," Kitty promised, not certain if he was still awake or not.
He'd survived again. He's going to be all right, she thought. Shifting slightly in his arms, Kitty smiled to herself in the dark. Tomorrow, Cowboy, tomorrow we're going to talk some more about that badge.