No Friend of Mine
Sorrow darkened Jimmy Hickok's eyes as he gazed down on the freshly dug grave. Brad had once been his friend, but over time had become his enemy. He had left Judge Enright's employ to prevent the man's ideals corrupting his and Brad's friendship. But the distance between them hadn't worked to keep their friendship intact, only to further damage it.
Judge Enright's influence on Brad had turned his friend into a younger version of himself. Brad was all about wanting power and money now and didn't care how he went about getting it. When the judge said jump, Brad did whatever he wanted him to do.
Jimmy had seen it when he stepped into the saloon and laid eyes on his friend for the first time in almost two years. Brad was suited up just like the judge, all spit and polished, and thinking that he was better than any other man in the saloon. Including Jimmy, and that riled Hickok just a bit.
Course, he wasn't too keen on fancy duds and shiny things, but a few extra dollars in his pocket would have been nice. He wouldn't want to earn it the way the judge did business though. He had learned much from being around Teaspoon Hunter. The most important thing was that he knew what a real man was,and Judge Enright wasn't it. Neither was Brad.
He had decided to have a couple of drinks with Brad, shoot the breeze for a spell, and then head back to the station. But Brad had known just the right words to make him stay. He told him that Clara Enright, the judge's daughter had been kidnapped, and that he needed Jimmy's help to track her and her kidnappers down.
Clara was the first girl he had fallen for. She was beautiful with golden hair and blue eyes, and a sweet smile. She also possessed a kind heart and appeared to like him just as much as he liked her, even though he was a few years older than him.
She had wanted to teach him how to read, but her father had put an end to it. Said that Jimmy could learn more from doing that anything a book would tell him, and reluctantly Hickok had listened. He had wanted to read very much, but even more so, he had wanted to spend time with Clara.
So he had secured time off from Teaspoon and gone with Brad and the other men he had with him. With the tracking skills he had learned from Teaspoon and Buck, Jimmy had tracked Clara and her supposed kidnappers. Only what he had been told turned out not to be true.
Clara had run away with her beau. They had also taken a ledger from her father's office, and in it, they would be able to prove all the dirty land deals Enright was currently on trial for. Brad and the others did the men in, and before his shocked eyes, Clara had taken her own life.
One of Brad's men had struck him with gun, and left him in the had fled back to Enright's estate with Clara's body, and upon coming to, Jimmy made it back to the station.
While Emma tended to his head, Jimmy opened the package that had arrived for him while he was gone. Clara had sent him the ledger for safekeeping. Her words to him before she shot herself had made sense then and he made the decision to take the ledger to the courthouse to be used against the judge.
Kid, Buck, and Ike were outside waiting for him the next morning. They weren't about to let him ride into unknown trouble alone. He had done what he set out to do, and Judge Enright was convicted for his dirty deeds, and Brad was dead. He had called Jimmy out and Brad had lost. He wished things could have ended differently, but they hadn't, and he would have to live with that.