Although this tale is mostly a young Matt's story, I thought this opening chapter offered an opportunity to flesh out Chester's background and put him in a place to meet first Doc and then Matt. The chapter directly references Season 3's Gun for Chester and Season 15's Stryker.
Chapter 1 - A Kansas Town Beckons a Texan Who'd Served in the Union Army
Chester Goode, unlike his brother Magnus, who disappeared somewhere on the prairie well before the war made itself felt in the flatlands of east Texas, wanted to do his part. Living in cotton country, but in a poor farm family that couldn't afford slaves and grew more vegetables than cotton, the young man sought a way to see the wider world beyond nearby Marshall or even the bigger town to the northeast, Texarkana. Despite the growing rumors that war would soon be coming, the 19-year-old sought out the nearest army post and joined up. When the war broke out he thought of deserting to join up with the local Confederate regiment, but somehow his sense of fairness wouldn't allow him to fight to preserve the institution of slavery. He'd met slaves and freemen who were just like him except for the color of their skin. Some, thanks to benevolent masters, even had more education. For Chester formal learning had been squeezed in between the chores that went along with trying to make a living from the land. He could read, write and do basic arithmetic, but little more than that. Even the larger words in newspapers gave the young man born on June 4, 1841 problems.
The army taught the gangling youth to shoot and, because as a farm boy he could blend into the countryside, transferred the private to a unit fighting in Arkansas and Missouri. The young soldier's unit would slip behind enemy lines posing as just what they were – boys fresh off the farm. All they had to do was keep away from the regular Confederate patrols and fire on them, then pretend they knew nothing about the attack if they happened to be spotted somewhere down the road. Just a few months later he was a battle-scarred veteran with a bullet in his right knee. For his trouble he was promoted to Corporal and assigned as an assistant cook to the Mess Sargent for his regiment. The one-time Texas farmer found he liked cooking. It was the best way to assuage his hefty appetite. He even learned a bit about cooking.
Chester was mustered out of the army in Stone County, Missouri almost exactly five years to the day he first joined up if you subtracted a couple of months. He soon drifted into the town of Godell with no idea of what he wanted to do with his life. Despite his war inflicted handicap, the lanky youth was able to secure odd jobs and with his affable personality to start to make friends. However, his innate sense of fair play and common courtesy would sometimes get him into trouble. Such was the case one night as he ate in a café and spotted a man who, in his opinion, was mistreating a girl, although others might have thought differently and not become involved. Instead, he used his army issued pistol in an altercation with Rufus Ledbetter.
Both boys were armed & when challenged Rufus drew his weapon to try to force Chester to back down and leave him to further harass the girl. Instead the Texan with the gimpy leg stood his ground and pulled his own gun. When he heard his adversary pull back the hammer, he fired, killing the self-appointed gift to women and earned the wrath of the slain man's brother Asa. Thinking it best that he move on to where he wasn't known, Chester headed west into Kansas.
By the end of June 1865 he found himself in the new, not yet incorporated town of Dodge City where the City Marshal, appointed a year ago, Josh Stryker, took a liking to the former soldier turned so-so cook and offered him the position of Jailer. For the low pay, actually a portion of the marshal's pay allotted by the town council, of $8 a month, he performed all the janitorial and prisoner-related tasks around the jailhouse, the only brick building in town.
The job wasn't much, but he had a place to sleep on a cot in the jailhouse office, free meals if he cooked them himself while preparing food for the prisoners and a chance to make friends. There were also more than enough places for the affable young man of 24 to lose what little he had on dance hall girls and gambling. When Doc Adams joined the community in time for the town's first official Fourth of July celebration affording him a chance to get all the medicines and tonics he thought he might need, Chester Goode decided he just possibly had found a home. At the very least, Dodge had become a place where he was accepted despite his stiff leg and country ways, if not always respected.