I would like to thank BroncoMap and LadyBrit for beta reading this story for me. Their detailed comments and suggestions were very valuable in helping me to get across the story it was my intention to write. Any errors, typos, or other problems are - of course - my own.

At this point, thirteen out of twenty-one chapters are complete and it is my intention to post a new chapter every other day until the story is complete. I'm starting you out with two chapters to get the feel for the story. I hope you enjoy what I've written, and as always I greatly appreciate your comments and PMs - it's what keeps me writing. Nevada Rose

Chapter One: Matt and Doc

Matt knelt beside her and held back her hair as she bent, retching, over the slop jar. It seemed to take a long time before she could stop, but finally she settled back hard on her bottom on the washroom floor, her arms crossed tightly across her stomach. He poured water into her tooth mug and handed it to her. She rinsed and spat. "Done?" Matt asked. Kitty nodded and he covered the big jar and rose to carefully place it on the other side of the washroom before returning to lift her to her feet.

When she was back in bed, and Matt was seated beside her, wiping her face with a damp towel, he asked, concerned, "What was that all about? I thought you were over that part a month ago."

"I thought so too, cowboy, but apparently not," she managed with a wan smile.

"Well, I think it's time we let Doc in on this, Kitty. I'm going to go up and see him after I finish my morning rounds," Matt told her.

Kitty agreed silently, settling back into her pillows. Her stomach had finally calmed, and she thought if she could just lie still it might stay that way. The touch of pink in the light beginning to come through her front window told her it was barely dawn. Matt stroked the back of a big hand against her cheek and then stood up and began pulling his clothes on. She was sleeping when he quietly left the room a few minutes later, carrying his boots.

OoOoO

The sun was full up when he finished a quick walk up and down Front Street, and he figured it was probably near six and late enough to wake Doc without risking too much commotion. Matt's long legs took him up the staircase to the doctor's office and he tried the knob without knocking. The door opened into Doc Adams' office, and the gentleman himself, still dressed in shirtsleeves, was just lifting a coffee pot from the top of his small stove. He looked up as Matt came in and raised his eyebrows in query. Matt nodded and reached for one of the heavy china mugs hanging from pegs on the wall. Doc filled Matt's cup, then his own, and settled into the chair in front of his desk. Matt took the more comfortable padded armchair next to the front window and sipped his coffee. It was hot and fragrant, and much better than what Festus made.

"You got something special to talk about, or are you just here to mooch my coffee?" Doc asked after a few quiet minutes.

"I'd like you to go see Kitty a little later, Doc," Matt said, "She was sick this morning when we woke up, but I got her back into bed afterwards and she's sleeping now."

Doc's eyes lifted in hastily concealed surprise and he regarded his friend shrewdly from under bushy grey brows. "You do realize that's the first time in the fifteen years she's been in Dodge that you have ever mentioned yourself, Kitty, and the word 'bed' in the same sentence?"

Doc expected some show of embarrassment, possibly even a blush, but wasn't ready for Matt's easy smile and shrug, "You know I sleep with her, Doc. Pretty sure you've known that for a long time, even before the last couple of years."

"Well, if she's pregnant again, son, you're doing more than sleeping," he commented tartly, and was surprised to find that Matt's reaction was a wide grin and a solemn "Ohhh, yeah!"

Doc's hand went up to cover his smile in a swipe at his moustache. "This the first time she's been sick?" he asked.

Matt's expression became more serious as he shook his head. "No she got over that part three four weeks ago, Doc. That's why I want you to see her. We didn't expect this today."

"What the hell do you mean, three or four weeks ago?" Doc replied angrily, "How long have you known about this, you big ox?"

"Kitty says she's a little over three months, Doc. She didn't want to tell you until she was sure she would keep this one. Said there was nothing new you could tell her about how to do that."

"Damnation, Matt, you should have known better than that even if she didn't!" Doc exclaimed.

Matt shrugged again. "She wanted to keep it quiet, Doc. I figured that was her choice. Telling you didn't seem to change anything that first time, and then last time…"

Doc scrubbed at his moustache yet again, and looked up at Matt through heavily lidded eyes. "I know, son. That was mighty tough on both of you." Kitty had miscarried painfully and bloodily about a week after her rape by Mannon the previous winter – with Matt still disabled from a gunshot wound.

Doc stood and began assembling bits and pieces from his cabinet, laying them out on his examining table and then fetching his black leather bag to tuck them away. "I'll go see her in a few hours, after she's gotten some sleep." He hesitated, and then faced Matt again, leaning back against the end of the exam table and looking very directly at the huge man sprawled in his chair beside the window, "What changed, Matt? A dozen years with nothing to show the two of you were more than good friends…" Well, that wasn't quite true but he let it pass. "And then three pregnancies in two years. What changed?"

Matt considered that for a bit, the silence comfortable between them. At last he said, "Etta Stone, Doc," he said. "Etta Stone and her boys changed everything."

Doc accepted that, sipping at his coffee, hoping his own reticence might spark further comment. It did. This was something Matt had wanted to say, to share, for a long time. Now he wanted to get it out, talk with Doc about it before things changed again next week. "Those years before, and it wasn't quite a dozen, you old reprobate, we weren't that fast off the mark, well anyway, those years we would get together a few times a month, when I was in town, and things were quiet, and when Kitty felt it was safe…"

Matt looked up at him to find Doc nodding in acknowledgement. He remembered vividly his painfully frank discussions with a younger, worried, Kitty. Discussions where Matt's name was never once mentioned, but most everything else was. Sadly, there wasn't much he could tell her that she didn't already know – times to avoid, times that were likely safer, what she could ask her partner to do, if he would, and if he could – and a sincere but general request to be careful.

"Kitty knew how I felt about marriage and a family in those days, and she accepted that better than any woman I'd ever known. Yeah, I know there were times… but mostly she didn't push me for more than I could give her, and she knew… well, she knew a baby would change everything for both of us." Matt regarded the cup in his hands with great interest, turning it, noticing a small chip in the handle. "You remember that time back in '74 when I resigned the badge after killing those three men from Jake Brand's gang?"

"That was when Joe Stanger killed that young girl at the Long Branch, and Chester went hightailing it out to Carter Creek to find you and make you strap on your gun?"

"Yeah. Kitty and I were out there fishin'. And I was fixin' to ask her to marry me. That very day. But Chester interrupted. Made me see that I couldn't quit, even if I wanted to, because there was no one else who could do the job that had to be done." Matt was quiet for a bit. "Kitty understood. She and Linda had been pretty good friends. Linda's death hit her hard. She knew what would happen to Dodge if I gave up bein' Marshal. And she offered, well, she offered herself. Without strings. Without marriage. I'm not always proud that I took her up on that, Doc, but it did work for us. For a lot of years." Matt gave up on the coffee cup and raised his eyes to his friend's, "There may not have been a ring, but there was a lot of love."

"I know that, Matt." Doc conceded, "And a lot discretion and self-control from both of you."

"Humpf." Matt huffed. "Sometimes it seemed that was almost all there was, but we worked it out. There were a lot of good times. I was able to protect her from some bad things, even if I couldn't keep her from others." He sighed, "But over the years, well, people just began to assume things about us, and when Jake Stone came into town askin' for the Marshal's woman, he found plenty of people to point her out."

"After Kitty killed Etta Stone, after we got back to Dodge…" Matt shook his head, but the words kept spilling out. He'd tied these things inside himself for years on end, and suddenly it seemed important that Doc understand, now, before he went up to see Kitty. "What we'd had before, it just wasn't enough. For a while, there were nightmares. She couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep well at least, when I was gone... I wanted to be with her every night I could, needed to be with her, Doc. You asked me when things changed, well that's when it happened."

"You sure don't do anything the easy way, do you, Matt?" Doc asked. "Ten years of bein' darn careful not to get her with child, and then three pregnancies in a row? You couldn't have done much better if you'd been trying."

Matt stood to refill his cup, and then turned solemnly to face the man who meant so much to him, "We have been tryin', Doc," he said. "No, not that first time, we just got careless, maybe better to say we stopped caring enough to be careful, but after that, well… Look, Doc, people change. When I first took to the law Adam Kimbro convinced me that law and a family don't mix. Frank and I, we argued about that plenty those early years, but I believed it. Frank wanted me to marry Kitty right off, and it upset him when I didn't. But it was the right decision for that time. It's not the right decision anymore. Times change. People change. I'm forty-two years old, Doc. I never thought I'd live to see forty. And right now, Kitty, our baby, those are the most important things there are for me."

"You gonna marry her, son?" Doc asked.

"Yes, sir, I am. Next Thursday evening when Judge Brooker finishes holding court. That's the other thing I came up here to say, Doc. I know you haven't always approved of how I've treated Kitty, but will you stand up with me? At our wedding?"

"You know I will, son. You know that. Proud to," the old man said, but his hand reached out to hold Matt's upper arm, shake it a little, "But you need to tell me, Matt. You gonna give up that badge?"

Matt tried to clear his head, but there was still too much emotion seeping past barriers that he usually kept clamped firmly shut. "I'm still not sure about that, Doc. Kitty and I are still goin' round about it. Seems we both change our minds from day to day on that one."

Doc recoiled a little, dropping his hand, "Kitty wants you to stay on as marshal? I'd have to hear that from her own lips."

"Some days she does, Doc," Matt affirmed. "You go ahead and talk to her about it, but look here, you think she could have put up with me all these years, Doc, the gunfights, the bullets, the fights, all those nights out on the trail with her not knowin' where I was or if I was comin' back – you think she could have done that if she hadn't known how important it was? Part of her wants me to give up the badge. Part of her still feels it's as important now as it was back when Stanger killed Linda Hawkins and there was no one to stand up to him 'cept me."

Doc watched him cannily, "Sounds like maybe you've got some idea how to change her mind about that."

"I've got an idea. Don't know yet if it will work. I'm tryin' to get Frank to come down out of the High Lonesome and take over in Dodge. It's been more than a year since Maria was killed. Nearly a year since he headed back to Montana."

"A year's not a long time to mourn, Matt," Doc told him gently.

"No." Matt sighed, "I know it's not. But we need him here. I need him. Kitty needs him." Matt set down his empty cup. "You'll go see Kitty in an hour or two, Doc?" he asked, on his way out the door.

"You just betcha I will, Mister Marshal," Doc answered, "You just try and stop me."