That's What Friends Are For
The three of us walked into my office. I stepped toward the safe on the right by my desk while Sheriff James Riley strode straight ahead and took the keys from the peg by the door to the cells, following the prisoner Ben Stack through it. By the time Riley returned to the office, closing the door behind him, I'd locked Ben's gun belt in the safe and reached into my desk drawer for the badge I'd tossed in it the night before.
"Matt, I reckon Stack turning himself in means you'll be staying on as marshal. Stack filled me in on the details as far as he knows them. I won't ask for any more of them from you, but I do have one favor to ask. Will you walk with me as far as the Dodge House? My horse ain't the only one who's wore out from that 50-mile ride down from Jetmore after getting Stack's wire in your name."
"Yeah," I replied as I pinned the badge back on. "I've got an errand or two to deal with anyway."
I left Riley at the door to the hotel and continued on to the telegraph office. Barney was still there.
"I need you to send a telegram rescinding the one I sent this morning."
"No need, Marshal. I never sent that one. I'd just opened up when you came in with it and must have been still half asleep. I put it aside to send as soon as I had everything ready, then forgot about it. Oh, here it is on the floor."
Barney had deliberately forgotten despite his contrary claim. People here in Dodge know how seriously I take my oath. They'd have trouble believing I'd resign without a very good reason, especially at the start of the cattle season. Even given the proof in the form of the wire I'd given Barney to send and he read aloud as if to confirm that's what I meant, they'd seriously question it. Barney, unlike the cowboy who overheard him and Hank, who had spread the news, obviously didn't believe I really quit. He just set my slip of paper aside and watched me leave. Funny how he had no trouble sending Ben's wire to Riley that was supposedly from me immediately. I don't normally ask another town's sheriff for help either.
"Might as well rip that old one up," I said before I turned toward the door.
Out of shear habit I continued down the boardwalk on my rounds. It was getting late. Most shops were already closed or closing, leaving only the saloons to obviously seek new customers. Soon I'd rattled every locked door, watched others being locked and looked over the batwing doors of every saloon but one. I slowed my footsteps, repeating my earlier conversation with Doc while I packed my saddlebags just before Riley arrived over in my mind.
"Then it's true, you're leaving. Where you going?"
"Don't know yet."
"Well, how long you figure to be gone?"
"Don't know that either, Doc. Just haven't figured it all out yet."
"Just giving it all up, huh. Why?"
"'Cause the law's given me a problem I can't handle. Either I arrest the man who saved my life or I gotta take off the badge. You know anything else I can do?"
"Well, no. Have you told Kitty?"
"I haven't told her yet, Doc. Just been putting that off as long as I could, I guess."
While I'd been ruminating, my feet led me to the Long Branch. Kitty wasn't around when Ben turned himself in, but Honey Dare or Sam had to have told her by now. That wasn't the problem. Thanks to Ben being such a good friend by first putting himself in front of the bullet Hi Evers meant for me and then sending for Riley after he learned I resigned rather than arrest him, I wasn't leaving. However, Kitty had to have heard I was planning on it. As much as I was afraid of her reaction, I couldn't put off facing her any longer.
"Marshal, she's in her office," Sam told me as soon as I came up to the bar after I didn't see her.
Taking a deep breath, I walked to the door marked office and knocked softly. She asked me to enter, thinking it was Sam, not me. I quietly closed the door. That's when she turned her head from the ledger on her desk. Her expression immediately changed. There was no mistaking that glare. I was in deep trouble.
"So, you're finally getting around to telling me you're leaving. You couldn't tell me last night after I welcomed you back from abruptly leaving to do rounds and taking forever with them! No, you had to wait until the whole town knew. Did you think the rumors wouldn't reach me? I don't know if I even want to hear your excuse."
"I don't have one, Kitty. I reckon I was afraid to tell you, so I kept putting it off. I thought Doc would have told you that."
"No, like everyone else, Doc's been avoiding me. I learned you quit your job and everything remotely connected with it from a drifter I brought a bottle to. He overheard it when Hank was told about it at the livery."
"Honey, I'm sorry. You know I never meant to hurt you. Anyway, it doesn't matter now. I'm staying."
"Oh, so that's supposed to fix everything! Well it doesn't, Mister! You can just take yourself and that badge out of here right now!"
It may have been foolish, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. I took the few steps that brought me to her chair she'd turned toward me without getting up. She immediately spun it back around to face her desk again. Something inside me told me if I gave up and left the room now what we'd begun over ten years ago would be over. Instead, I rested my hands on her shoulders and bent down to gently kiss the top of her head. She didn't push my hands away or shove the wheeled chair into me. I was thankful for that.
Encouraged, I begged, "Please forgive me. You've told me before I'm a slow learner. I wanted to tell you. I just didn't know how. Then events just took over."
"Alright, Matt Dillon, I'll think about forgiving you," she replied as her growl turned into a purr while looking into my eyes. "It's hard to stay mad at you when you look at me like that. Tell Doc I want to see him. Then go back to your jail. I'll find a way to let you know if I want to see you later."
I left, feeling a bit better, but still apprehensive about our future together. Despite knowing we couldn't marry and raise a family while I wore the badge, I still wanted her beside me if that's what she wanted. Fact is, I would still want to be with her even if she chose to find someone who could give her what I can't. I'm willing to sacrifice my happiness for hers. I love her that much. If keeping what we had meant getting Doc and waiting in my office while they talked, I could live with it. Nobody knows us better than he except for how well we know each other. However, before I sent him to her, I wanted to talk things over with him.
"Matt, what brings you here? I see you've decided to stay," he added eyeing the badge on my shirt.
"Ben solved my problem. He was the one who sent for Riley so I wouldn't have to choose between the badge and him. Then he gave himself up so he can be tried for killing Hal Biggs. That's a solution neither of us expected earlier this evening. What he did completely changes the implications of my testimony. I'm no longer the person who can convict him because of what I saw."
"What exactly did you see?"
"Ben and Honey holding hands under the table when I was bringing a bottle of Kitty's private stock back to our table for a proper celebration of Ben's recovery. I suspected he thought Biggs was drawing on him, but all I could swear to in court is that Biggs was unarmed and they were having an affair when he killed her husband. Honey provided the evidence, once Ben admitted what he'd done, that proved me right."
"You still haven't answered my original question, Matt. You want to tell me now? If not, I'm kicking you out and going to bed."
"Kitty. She wants to talk to you before she'll even consider forgiving me for not telling her last night about quitting."
"Oh well, in that case, I'll ask her for a nightcap."
Doc and I left his office together, parting at the door to the Long Branch. He stepped inside the saloon while I continued down Front Street to my office. I let Ben know I was back, but neither of us felt like talking so I left him to fall asleep on the cot in his cell while I put my feet up on my desk to wait for word from Kitty.
It came a lifetime later. There was a light knocking on the office door. I looked up at the clock, as I asked whomever it was to come in, to see only 15 minutes had passed. Honey stood just inside the doorway.
"Marshal, Doc walked over here with me so I could see how Ben's doing if that's okay with you. I won't be long. Then, if you don't mind, perhaps you could escort me back to the Dodge House on your way to the Long Branch. Kitty said something about seeing to the usual late night arrangements at the end of your final rounds for the night."
I opened the door to the cells and waited while Honey said goodnight to Ben. True to her word, she didn't take long. However, by now it was past midnight, so my prisoner had no problem saying goodnight to me as well. Once Honey was safely inside the hotel, I lengthened my stride to arrive at the Long Branch that much quicker. Sam was just closing the glass doors when he saw me.
"Marshal, Miss Kitty's expecting you. I'll let myself out the back and lock that door if you'll lock up the front. I wouldn't want anyone sneaking in the back way."
Nobody else was on the street as Sam went out the back and I closed and locked the glass doors. Kitty was turning the last of the downstairs lamps by the bar down. She soon joined me by the stairs. We dimmed the remaining lamps before climbing the stairs, our arms around each other. I had hopes she'd completely forgiven me when she invited me to hang up my hat and gun belt on the pegs by the door while she poured two glasses of brandy and brought them to where I was seated on the settee.
"Cowboy, Doc explained that you knew you had to tell me, but didn't know how to bring it up. You are a slow learner. After all this time together you should have learned if something's troubling you, I not only sense it, I'm ready to listen."
"Is that a fact?"
"That's a fact. I knew something was wrong when you left so suddenly last night, claiming you had to make your rounds. However, instead of saying anything when you got back well after closing, so I could help you think it through, you clammed up. Nothing I tried could relax you, which made your silence about what was bothering you worse."
"I should know by now I can't fool you. You know me too well, but I also know you. You get mad when I tell you I'm leaving and I don't know how long I'll be gone. I need to be careful just how I tell you or you'll simply stop listening."
"Oh, Matt. I get mad because you announce your decision as if it only concerns you rather than both of us. Why couldn't you have told me what you discovered just the way you told Doc? I know what the law means to you and I also know what friendship means to you. Ben saving your life by risking his meant my world wasn't shattered. However, you being torn apart by having to choose between the badge and gratitude for what he did, tore me apart as well. You didn't want to be responsible for bringing about the death of someone who kept you from dying simply by upholding the law. I understand that. What I still can't understand is that you can't see that I want, no need, to share that sort of burden with you."
"I reckon I never realized how my troubles also affect you. I know I can tell you things I can't tell anyone else, but I forget that when I tell you those things that by helping me deal with them, you're also helping you deal with them. I'm glad you're here for me."
"Cowboy, that's what special friends are for. Just you remember that the next time you shut me out about something as important as quitting your job."
As always, Kitty was right. I was foolish to have been afraid to tell her what was bothering me right away. I was only glad things were right with us again, maybe even stronger than they were before. All that remained before we put it all behind us was setting Ben's trial date.
The trial took place a week later. After hearing the circumstances and type of man he is from Ben's, my and Honey's testimony the jury found Ben Stack had acted in self-defense. The case against him was dismissed. Even so, he and Honey decided to leave Dodge City and settle as a married couple in Jetmore where Sheriff Riley offered Ben a job as deputy. I learned, looking back on the whole thing – Ben saving my life and then seeing how it caused a conflict for me sending for Riley and what having Doc and mostly Kitty be there to help me through it – Kitty, that pretty smart redhead, was right again. It showed me that is what friends are for and I'm lucky to have some really good ones.