Passin'-Through Stranger
A Laramie/Gunsmoke crossover
by Sevenstars
SUMMARY: Jess's experiences just before he set out on the journey that led him to Sherman Ranch.
In "Stage Stop," Jess tells Andy and Jonesy that he and Pete Morgan had been "in Kansas" when Morgan cracked him over the head and robbed him, but he doesn't say where in Kansas. However, we know from his later revelations that he has been in Abilene (where he saved Christy from the "dirty backshooter"), Wichita (where he met up with Roney Bishop for the second time), Ellsworth (where, four years before the events of "The Lawless Seven" (Third Season), he ran afoul of then-Marshal Calvin Hawkes), and Dodge City—all before 1870, when he first arrived at Shermans'. Since, in my version of the historical Universe, Matt Dillon was named Deputy U.S. Marshal at Dodge (under Josh Stryker) in 1868, then took over the top job a couple of years later when Stryker was sent to prison for murder, and since Doc Adams arrived there in 1866 and Kitty Russell in '69, I thought it might be fun to speculate on what might have happened if it had been there that the assault took place.
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When he looked back on it, long afterward, Jess Harper was to tell himself that if Pete Morgan had simply made up his mind to ambush him out of an alley, things might have turned out very differently. Dodge City in early March was a pretty lively place, even after the "legitimate" stores and businesses closed down, around six, and folks went home to get their suppers: the buffalo hunters were just getting well into their blowout season, for prime "winter robes" could be taken right through February, after which the animals started to shed and get raggedy and their hides weren't worth much. So, for a hunter, it was still early, and like trailhands at the end of a drive, they were spending most of their time raising hell and shoving a chunk under the corner. Still, given the weather, they generally preferred to do it indoors, and while there was always a certain degree of background noise filtering out onto the street through the closed storm-doors of the various resorts, Jess thought he would still have heard the click of a gun being cocked, or even the squeak of leather as the owner grabbed the butt to draw and moved it in its holster: gunfighters with poor hearing didn't live long. He'd have had enough warning to at least drop and roll, if not to draw as he turned. To be honest, he hadn't figured on Morgan having brains enough to think of lying in wait for him in the stable, where any sounds he made could be dismissed as the rustling of rats in the hay or the shifting and stomping of horses in their stalls.
But then, on the other hand, if he hadn't done it that way, Jess's journey might never have ended as it did. And for that ending, he would always be profoundly thankful.
**SR**
Dodge City, March 7, 1870:
"Marshal!" The door of Matt Dillon's office flew open and banged against the wall behind it. "Marshal, you better come quick. We just found a man unconscious in the barn. Looked like somebody cracked him over the head."
Dillon, who had been promoted to the dignity of full U.S. Marshal in charge of the town only two months before, jacked himself up out of the swivel chair and grabbed his gunbelt off the corner of the big flat-topped table-desk, slapped it around his hips and let the buckle hit and drop into its accustomed hole, crossed the room in two long strides, and plucked his hat off the peg, then shouldered quickly into his jacket—at this season the average temperatures in Dodge ranged from 56 at midafternoon down to 34 in the wee hours of morning, with exceptions in either direction always a possibility, not to speak of the occasional spring blizzard. "Have you sent for Doc?"
"Moss went to fetch him," the messenger agreed; he was Grimmick's new stableman, Matt hadn't yet nailed his name down—livery-stable hands had a way of being migratory and transient. "He told me to get you while he was doin' that."
Quick as Dillon's ground-eating stride made him to respond to such alarms, he was no quicker than Galen Adams, "Surg. & Genl. Pract.," as his sign over Jonas's store proclaimed him. The graying physician was down on one knee beside the injured man, who lay, as the stableman had declared, in the packed-clay centerway that ran between the two rows of stalls, just outside one in which a sturdy-looking light bay stood tethered, a good double-rig Texas saddle hung on the peg. The horse had shifted to watch the tableau past its own shoulder, ears and dark eyes alert; Matt noticed peripherally that it bore a Texas brand on its near hip. Moss Grimmick, the stable owner, was watching too, over Doc's shoulder, hands braced on knees.
Matt took in the scene in a quick, all-embracing glance, as most of fourteen years of keeping the law—since he was barely eighteen—in more than a dozen towns from Missouri to Arizona had taught him to do. The injured man wasn't big, least of all in comparison to Dillon's towering six feet seven; the marshal pegged him at just under six feet, lean, compact, but notably muscular, with a horseman's narrow hips and almost nonexistent butt. He had a rather angular face, high cheekbones and a tapering jaw, a prominent blade of a nose; his hair was matte-black, with a long forelock with a deep wave in it. He was dressed like a cowhand, but in better quality clothes than most of the breed might choose, and Matt noticed the elaborate stitchery on his boots and the low-cut holster strapped at his side. There was no sixgun in it. His jacket hung open, and his soft green flannel shirt had been pulled roughly out of the waistband of his jeans, the undershirt beneath partly unbuttoned as if to extract a money belt. A curl-brimmed black Stetson, its band brightened with silver cockles, lay in the straw litter nearby, and the trailcraft Matt had learned from Ben C. Slocum and Luke Brazo told him that there had been something like a scuffle there; the way the straw was scraped away from the clay foundation made it obvious to one with the training to see it.
"Doc?" he prompted.
"Well, he's alive, Matt," Adams replied, not looking around, "but somebody whacked him a good one; my guess is he's got a concussion, maybe even a depressed skull fracture. We need to get him up to my office—he can't be left alone for at least twenty-four hours, and I need to check him regularly for signs of alertness. Moss, find a board or somethin' so we can keep him as flat as possible, will you?"
"Sure thing, Doc."
Dillon stopped the stable-owner with a gesture. "Do you know who he is, Moss? Is this his horse?"
"Yes, sir, it is," Grimmick agreed at once. "He rode in just as I was gettin' ready to leave last night, asked to have it put up in a stall like you see, and grained. He didn't give me his name, but I've seen him around town a few times this winter; I think he's been helpin' hold that Crutch Bar herd over west a ways."
Matt nodded, recognizing the designation; he knew the outfit's boss. It was pretty generally known that the AT&SF Railroad would be pulling into Dodge sometime in the spring, making it a trailhead as Abilene, Wichita, and Ellsworth had been before it, rather than merely a waystop for herds of stockers on their way to the northern ranges or beef going to the Army posts above the Platte. Chase Brackett, who was out of Bandera, had heard the word at some point and made up his mind to hold his herd on the grass till the steel got there, which would give him a good shot at the highest prices. He'd found an abandoned soddie where his men could get in out of the weather, pasted on an extra room for a kitchen, thrown up a corral for his remuda and settled in for the winter. If you—or the owners you were acting for—could afford to wait out the interval, and if the weather co-operated and you could get off with low drift and losses, it was a shrewd move; cattle had been going up every year since the end of the war, and prices were often highest in the spring, since the herds more or less stopped moving around November. Last year the Kansas price of "fat beef," even longhorns—which could go for as much as four times what stockers brought—had topped out at $40 a head, and there was no telling what it would be when the railroad came. The buffalo grass of the western prairies, curing on the stem, made the best stock feed ever thought of, and a herd the size of Brackett's—4000 head—could get by with four men per two-hour nightwatch, or sixteen total, where getting them up the trail could require more than twenty. Very often a boss planning to do this sort of thing would pay off his crew, except perhaps for, at most, his segundo, cook, and wranglers, and send them home, making up what he needed from local hands off the nearby farms and ranches, who were always eager to find a way to pick up a few extra dollars over the slack months of winter, and usually worked cheaper; sometimes he'd pick up a passing drifter or two besides.
"Let me know as soon as he comes to, Doc," Matt said, "or if you find anything on him that'll tell us who he is."
Adams closed up his bag and carefully got to his feet. "Well, there's one thing I can tell you," he noted, "and that's that I caught sight of this feller playin' poker in the Long Branch last night when I stopped in, about nine, it must have been. Maybe Bill Pence or Kitty could tell you somethin' about him."
"Thanks, I'll go over as soon as they open up," Matt agreed.
That wasn't till ten o'clock, and even then, things didn't start getting lively till midafternoon or so; even a buffalo hunter needed time to sleep off last night's indulgences. So the girls did their shopping and such right after breakfast, and when Matt pushed the storm-door open, it was to find half a dozen of those who worked in the Long Branch eating breakfast at the tables, dressed not in their fancy knee-length working gear but in street clothes not unlike those you might see on any town-dwelling woman, only perhaps a little more stylish—make that elaborate—as to cut and decoration, which wasn't surprising; a hostess in a good bar routinely made ten dollars a week, plus a commission on every drink she persuaded a customer to buy (which, at ten per cent, could be as much again, or even more during the busiest seasons), and very often—since "respectable" hotels and boardinghouses didn't want anything to do with her—she got a room thrown in as well. Sometimes a couple of them would team up and rent a small house; a furnished two-room place could be had for $18 a month—nine dollars, or less than a week's pay, each, leaving thirty-five or more for food, fuel, clothes, and what-have-you.
Bill Pence, the owner, wasn't on the scene yet, but Dillon quickly spotted Kitty Russell by her auburn-red hair, neatly caught up in a chenille net beneath a jaunty small hat tipped forward over her nose and decorated with a soft cabbage-shaped rosette of tulle, lace, velvet, and ribbon. Her moss-green bengaline dress had a narrow edging of lace at the throat, and the sleeves ended in a froufrou of white. A long raglan cloak, in tweed, was thrown over the back of her chair, suggesting that she planned to do some errands once she'd finished eating. Dillon stood just inside the doorway for a minute, just enjoying the sight of her. They'd been an item almost since she pulled into Dodge last fall, though discreetly—he didn't think anyone but Pence and Doc and Stryker had known about it. He still remembered feeling her eyes on him that first morning as he ate his breakfast at Delmonico's. She'd been trying not to make her interest obvious, but he'd noticed, all the same.
He crossed the room to join her, sweeping off his hat. " 'Morning, Kitty."
"Well, good morning to you, cowboy," she said with a smile. "Join me?"
"Kitty, you know I had breakfast hours ago," he replied. "But I'll have a cup of coffee with you."
Kitty turned in her chair and waved to a slight, blonde girl just replenishing her own cup from the coffeepot that sat on a cork mat at the end of the bar. "Amy, would you mind bringing the Marshal some coffee over here?"
"Sure thing, Kitty," Amy agreed, and a moment later a steaming china mug was set down across the table from the redhead—Matt had noticed before this that she very seldom sat with any of the other girls—and the blonde, with a not-quite-flirtatious smile, turned to go back to join her fellows at the one nearest the piano.
Matt settled into the chair. "How'd things go last night?" he asked.
"You ought to know," Kitty observed. "Nobody came running to get you, did they? Actually, it wasn't too bad at all, I don't know why. It seemed like most of what we had was local people."
"Not entirely from what I hear," he replied. "Doc told me he saw a young feller playin' poker in here, about nine, he thought—" He went on to give a quick description of the man from Grimmick's stable.
She nodded. "Yes, that's right, he was here. He came in about seven, I think; I noticed he smelled of bay rum, so he'd probably stopped to get cleaned up and get something to eat. He had one drink of whiskey, made it last a while, then found the liveliest poker game in the house and stayed in till we closed. You know, I don't think he's just a cowboy, Matt, and I'm not only talking about the way he wears his gun, either, or the way he was careful to keep his back to the wall. I've seen a lot of poker players, and that youngster is one of the best. Somebody taught him. He was the big winner in that game—finished up an easy hundred dollars to the good—but he wasn't showy about it."
"He must have had some money startin' out," Dillon guessed, "if he could win that much on a slow night."
She nodded. "I'd say about a hundred and thirty." Tilting her head to the side: "Now just why are you asking about him, Matt?"
"Because Moss and his stablehand found him lyin' in the centerway this morning with a cracked head," Matt told her. "It looked to me like he'd been rolled or somethin'. He's up at Doc's, still unconscious as far as I know. You wouldn't know anything more about him, like where he's from?"
"He talked like a Texan—Panhandle, I think," she replied. "I don't recall hearing him give a name, but I think someone called him Harper."
"Harper," Matt murmured thoughtfully. It was a good common English name, but he wondered—how many Harpers were there who talked with a Panhandle accent and carried their guns for a fast draw? Could it be Jess Harper? he thought. He'd been hearing that name for quite a few years now. The first time, if he remembered right, had been in New Mexico in '63, after he'd been captured and paroled in the war and, barred from further fighting, decided to return to the West that had been his home all his life. There'd been some stories told around Santa Fe of a young Texan by that name, one who travelled with the legendary Dixie Howard and had had some part, the previous year, in saving a couple of old land-grant ranchos from Anglo opportunists, though they'd moved on by the time Matt got there. He was said to be good—very good—not only with a gun but with cards, which, if Howard had been the one who trained him, wasn't surprising. Three years later, working as a deputy for Mark Handlin in Texas, Matt had seen a reward poster come through on Harper, $500 reward from Soho, but he'd heard it had been called in about a year afterward. He'd also heard that Harper had called and killed a fellow in Abilene—a fellow with something of a reputation—who'd been about to shoot a friend of his from ambush; right after the war, that had been. And gunned an outlaw named Roy Wade, out in the Utah Territory, for shooting another friend of his in the back; brought the body in for the reward, which he signed over to the friend's family, but hadn't been able to find the $80,000 in coin that Wade and his gang had lifted off an express shipment. He was said to have worked a while for King Bartlett in San Saba County, when Bartlett had his disagreement with V-Bar; Bartlett had always run a pretty rough outfit, Matt remembered. And soon after Matt had become deputy marshal here, he'd gotten word of Steve and Bert Bannister being killed in a stand-up fight over toward Ellsworth with somebody who matched Harper's description. The Bannisters were Frank Bannister's middle brothers, and theirs was a name well known to anyone who had lived in Texas in the '50's, as Matt had. From what he'd heard, Harper had deliberately maneuvered the pair into drawing on him, and shot them both before either one could get a bullet off.
Matt wasn't at all sure he liked the idea of a man with that kind of rep being in his town. Although if he was as bad hurt as Doc seemed to think, he wasn't likely to be causing much trouble for a while.
Still, a man didn't have to cause trouble to attract it, and by what Harper's rep had to say of him, he was one of the kind who attract it regularly and in quantity.
Kitty was watching him with shrewd violet-blue eyes. "You've heard about him, haven't you?"
"What makes you think so?" he countered.
"The fact that I was in Texas too, and more recently than you," she reminded him. "You know yourself how men in saloons talk about people they've seen and known. I had a notion who he was, when I heard him called by name, but it wasn't any of my business, really. But if he's been robbed of what he won here... that might make it my business, in a way."
He knew that Pence trusted her more than any of the others, had even put her to work as a dealer more than once. Knew, too, from what she'd let drop, that she'd done a good bit of travelling for someone so young—maybe not as much as he or Harper had, but enough to have picked up a lot of stories. "I guess it would," he agreed. She wasn't like the other girls; that was one of the things that had first attracted him about her. She was looking for something they weren't—permanence, belongingness. She'd developed a powerful sense of identification with the Long Branch in the few months she'd been here; he wasn't quite sure why, though he liked the idea of it. He wanted her to stay around.
He finished his coffee, exchanging small talk with her and promising, before he left, to keep her current on Harper, then headed back to his office. There he found Chase Brackett waiting in one of the captain's chairs set out on the boardwalk under the front windows. " 'Morning, Chase," he said, shaking hands. "What brings you in?"
"Lookin' for a couple of men of mine," the trail boss replied. "One asked for an advance on his pay yesterday and said he was ridin' in to look for a little fun. The other I missed at breakfast this mornin'—he hadn't said anything about wantin' the evening off."
"Let me guess about the first," Matt suggested. "About five-eleven, lean, black hair, rides a light bay and carries a gun like he meant it; goes by Harper. Am I right?"
"Don't tell me he got himself in trouble," sighed Brackett.
"Not the kind you're thinkin' about, no," said Dillon. "From what I've been able to piece together, he had a good night at poker in the Long Branch, and it seems like somebody decided to take advantage of it. He was found in Moss Grimmick's barn this mornin', slugged unconscious and robbed, from the looks of things. He's up at Doc's now."
"Blast," said Brackett quietly. "I was hopin' he'd just had a little too much to drink and ended up in one of your cells to sober up—though come to think of it, I can't recall him ever gettin' in that kind of trouble since he's been with me. He and a partner of his came down from somewhere up north late last fall and signed on to help us hold the beef. The partner's the other one missing—goes by Pete Morgan," and he went on to describe him and his horse and gear. "Morgan's no better and no worse than most men I might hire, but Harper—he's a top hand. If he's gonna be out of action a spell, I'll really miss him. These local boys I took on last year are all right as far as they go, but—" he shrugged— "they need a man or two who really knows the business to keep 'em toein' the mark, and Harper does."
"Hm," said Matt. The pattern was clear enough, to a man with his experience. Who better than a trail-partner would know just how good Harper was at cards, how likely he was to come out on top against the kind of competition Dodge would have to offer at this time of year? Who better would know his vulnerabilities, his habits? "Well, I'll ask around, Chase, and if I get a chance to talk to Harper—assumin' he wakes up, Doc wasn't sure of that—I'll find out if he knows who walloped him, but I'd guess right now that this Morgan decided poker winnings trumped friendship. He's probably long gone by now."
Chase grunted. "In that case," he said, "I don't reckon I'd much want to be in his boots, about now. You watch and see, Marshal. I'll lay you money as soon as Jess figures out what happened, he'll be yankin' at the bit to get after his... 'friend.' And bein' who you are, I figure you might have some idea already of just what else he's been doin' with his time, these last ten years or so."
"I do—but ten years?" Dillon was honestly surprised. "First I heard of him he'd been around Santa Fe with Dixie Howard, early in '62, I think."
"I heard somethin' about that myself," the trail boss agreed. "But I've got a cousin worked for the Wagon Fork spread in the Panhandle before the war. Harper's pa was foreman for Wind Vane, the next place upriver—till Frank Bannister and his outfit hit the place, right about the beginning of April '60. Killed every human critter on it, except for young Harper and a brother and sister—how they lived through it I'm not sure, but eventually they got down to Wagon Fork, and the people there got 'em to Amarillo, where the family had friends. The boy was just barely fifteen at the time, but the way I heard it, he didn't let that stop him; soon as he could get an outfit together, he was off huntin' Bannisters. Can't blame him; he lost his house, his pa, two young brothers and a little sister in the raid."
Well, that explains that fight with Steve and Bert Bannister, I guess, Matt told himself. "You want to stay around? I asked Doc to let me know as soon as Harper looked like he might make it..."
"No," said Brackett, "I'll have to try and find a couple men to fill in for Jess and Morgan, and at this time of year that's likely to take a while. But you keep me up to date, will you? And tell him I'll keep his gear safe for him till he's ready to ride out and pick it up."
"Gladly," Matt assented.
**SR**
It wasn't the first time he'd awakened to pain. There'd been the time he was barely sixteen and riding guard on a stagecoach between Idaho Springs and Mountain City, and a couple of no-goods had tried to hold it up; they hadn't survived the attempt, but they'd managed to clip his left leg twice, flesh wounds but hurtsome. There'd been the Minié ball that punched through his left hip, barely missing the bone, and taken a pretty fair-sized chunk of meat with it, the time his patrol was captured by the Seventh Michigan Cavalry. There'd been the saber that grooved his shoulder in the Blackfoot camp, and Santa Fe, and at least half a dozen other injuries gleaned in a short, hard life, not neglecting last year when Trav threw him and he broke his leg. But this pain was different. It wasn't the stabbing agony of a fracture, or the slow searing ache of a surface gash, or the deeper throb of a bullet wound. This was more like the worst hangover you could imagine, multiplied by ten, and somehow both inside his head and outside of it. Even through his closed eyelids, the bright late-winter sunlight coming in somewhere made him want to squint. He held in a moan of distress by sheer will; he couldn't afford to show he was conscious until he knew more of where he was and why.
Someone grunted softly, and he felt a hand grasp his wrist and hold it—not harshly, but firmly. "Steady, son," said an unfamiliar male voice. "No need to pretend with me, I've been dealin' with people comin' back to consciousness for longer'n you've probably been alive."
"Wha'—who—?" he mumbled in confusion, his fight-or-flight instinct kicking in for just a second, before he realized that the speaker must be a doctor. Slowly he cracked his eyelids open, wincing at the light, and cautiously catalogued his surroundings. A heavy iron bedstead on which he lay, with a thick Mariner's Compass quilt over him, each figure made of sixty-four symmetrical squares; a walnut stand alongside, with a lamp on it; a rawhide-bottom chair; a country-style pine washstand, painted and grained to look more expensive than it was, with a handsome Canton pitcher and bowl; a couple of pictures on the walls—a lithograph of Herrings's "Village Blacksmith," a steel engraving of a bust of Plato, and an engraving after Landseer's "The Twins," sheep and two collies. A window dressed in simple white muslin curtains that let the light pour in unobstructed, beyond which a board-and-batten wall was dimly visible. He recognized none of it, nor the man who stood beside the bed, holding his wrist in one hand and frowning at a pocket watch held cupped in the other. A middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair starting to fade into silver above the brow and a small clipped mustache, of average height, somewhat stooped with the approach of age, but wiry, his plain dark suit slightly rumpled and getting a bit shiny with age, black string tie askew, a slender gold watch chain looped at an angle from one side of his half-buttoned vest to the other. A man without much need or desire to impress anyone, Jess decided, and therefore one who was certain of who he was and the place he occupied in local life; but not a dirty man—his clothes might be untidy, but they were clean and in good repair, he had shaved that morning and there was a strong smell of carbolic soap about him, and a faint flavor of alcohol mixed in with it. Not whiskey, but pure alcohol, the kind Jess remembered from the Yankee hospital.
"Pulse is a lot better," the doctor observed, and leaned forward to peer into his patient's eyes, one and then the other. "Pupils're lookin' better too. Almost equal, and reactive to the light—good sign. But I'd lay money you're hurtin'. Let me give you somethin' for that—" He turned away for a moment, then slid his arm under Jess's head, raising it, and held a spoon in front of his lips. "Here."
Jess's nostrils filled with a remembered bitter smell. "No!" he yelped, and reflexively tried to throw himself backward, away from the drug and the nightmares it represented.
The doctor snatched the spoon away. "Settle down! I'm not gonna hurt you, and neither's this. It's just laudanum—"
"Know—it's—laudanum," Jess gasped. "Don't—don't want it—please—" He was ashamed of himself at having to beg, but like most men used to living in a natural way, he knew when he was injured or sick just as a wild animal does, and he was well aware that he was in no shape to put up a struggle.
"Oh," said the doctor, after a moment, his tone gentler now. "You've had it before, then. Field hospital?"
"N... no. C—convalescent camp. Was—only there—couple-three weeks, but—but I saw—" He couldn't stop his shudder.
"Now, listen to me, son." The doctor spoke with that same quiet voice, the way you might soothe a scared green colt, and the horsebreaker in Jess responded automatically. "I was in some of those places too, and I understand what's got you in such a state, but you have to remember that those were Army facilities, and mostly not Regular Army either. The surgeons and assistant surgeons in the volunteer outfits, just like the colonels and generals, were usually commissioned by state governors, and all too often they were moved by politics or personal friendship, not the skill or knowledge of the candidate. Most were well-meaning enough, but entirely too many were totally incompetent, and the contract physicians who were hired as necessary to supplement the regular staff were even more likely to be. Plus there was a lot of pressure, too few caregivers for too many men, and often not enough medicine, even in the Northern facilities, especially in the beginning. None of that's true here. It's just you and me, and in any case I only want to give you a couple of drops, enough to take the edge off; I need you to be able to talk to me and to understand what I tell you. So I'm not gonna overdose you or get you dependent on the stuff. I don't entirely like it myself, I've seen what it does to people who take too much of those patent medicines that are eighty or ninety per cent narcotics, but in the present state of medical knowledge it's the best thing we have. If you really feel strongly about it, I won't make you take it, but I can tell you you'll be a lot more comfortable, and better able to talk, if you do."
Jess had had a chance to get hold of himself and settle his racing heart as the man spoke, and while he might be unschooled he wasn't unintelligent—or unobservant; he saw that what the man had said about the hospitals and their staff made a lot of sense. "I—I—s... sorry... I'll t-try not to..."
"Fair enough. Let's try again." The doctor presented the spoon a second time; Jess shut his eyes, held his breath, and swallowed as soon as he felt the cool metal touch his lips. He gasped at the terrible taste, but he could tell that, indeed, it was a very small dose.
" 'M... sorry..." he reiterated. "Just—smelled it, and—I started rememberin'—"
"A lot of us have demons like that," the doctor said. "You know your name, son?"
He frowned, distracted from his memories and the residual aftertaste of the drug, wondering why anyone would ask such a dang-fool question. How could a man not know his own name? "Jess Harper," he said, slowly but firmly, and added, "Jesse Devlin Harper," giving his full handle so there could be no doubt.
"Know what year it is?"
"1870," said Jess at once. He wasn't likely to forget it, not with the tenth anniversary of the raid coming up fast. "And it's March, 'fore you ask."
"Who's President?"
Jess snorted. "Useless Grant." It wasn't that he held any personal animosity toward the victorious Union—after all, he hadn't enlisted for the Confederacy of his own free will; but from what he'd picked up in the illustrated papers, old Unconditional Surrender was proving to be a lot less able as head of the country than he'd been as head of an army. He'd been in office less than six months when the "black Friday" crash of last September 24 created panic on Wall Street. The country might have weathered this catastrophe if it hadn't been followed by a widespread economic instability due to Jay Gould's unloading his holdings. Grant had moved decisively to checkmate the swindlers, but failed to escape without assaults on his own integrity, and Greeley's Tribune and Dana's Sun alike carried frequent mention of his utter inexperience with the intricacies of American politics, his lack of interest in it or in government and of any of the true politico's zest for dealing with human beings, his undiscriminating choice of friends, and his cronyism, out of which he was given to stubbornly defending those around him even when they were caught in wrongdoing. He was said to be surrounded by a backstairs cabinet of mediocrities, self-seekers, and rascals, full of Radical Republicans and venal cronies.
The other man echoed his snort. "I served under him, and I'd have to agree with you just the same." He held up his hand. "How many fingers?"
Jess squinted. "Three," he decided after a moment's thought.
"Good. See if you can wiggle your toes for me."
Jess obliged. They stung a bit, with the kind of pain he recognized as mostly stiffness from not being moved in a while, but they followed his will. The doctor nodded, put his hand in his patient's, and said, "Now squeeze as hard as you can."
Again Jess did as he was told; by now he was beginning to realize that, as he'd been told, there had been just enough laudanum to blunt the worst of his terrific headache, and this made him not only much more comfortable but more relaxed and willing to trust. The doctor grunted softly in satisfaction, pulled up the chair and sat down. "Now I reckon you're a touch confused, and there are some questions I know you'll have to have answered for you. My name's Adams; most folks around Dodge call me Doc. You're in the back room of my office, been here two days and some, out like a light the whole time. Somebody tried to bend a gun barrel on the back of your head, and I'm half surprised he didn't—you must have the hardest skull in the annals of medical history. You had a concussion—still do, but it seems to be healin' itself, which concussions usually do if given a chance. You also have, or at least may have, what we call a depressed skull fracture, a kind of injury that presents a high risk of increased pressure on the brain, or a hemorrhage to it that crushes the delicate tissue; I was half afraid I'd have to call in the post surgeon over at Fort Dodge to consult with me and maybe do some surgery. But you notice I said 'high risk,' not 'certainty;' I understand you're a poker player, so you know the difference."
"All of which means just what, Doc?" Jess asked.
"Means you've got a long siege ahead of you still," Adams replied. "You may not realize how lucky you are to be alive; the feller who hit you could have killed you easy as not. But you seem to've come through without significant damage; you can see and hear and speak and move your extremities, so it's possible that, if you've got a fracture—and I really can't be sure, short of exploratory surgery—the blow fell just short enough not to put pressure on your brain or cause bleeding inside your skull, in which case you'll eventually heal up with nothin' more than a shallow dent in the bone. I don't want to have to go in, unless I've got no other choice; there's such a lot we don't know about the brain, I could end up messin' you up worse than you are. So you want to take it easy and give the damage time enough to repair itself. You'll need at least a week's bed rest, no excitement, nothin' that takes concentration or attention. After that, sittin' up in a chair for a little while every day, and by the end of another week some walkin', not too far. No riding, not till about this time next month; we need to see if and how your muscles and balance are affected."
Jess listened attentively, then frowned again. There was a memory-picture, very dim and fragmentary, skirmishing around his head; he couldn't make sense of it yet, but he felt somehow that it had a direct bearing on what the doc was saying, that it would mean he couldn't hold to the program being outlined for him. "I ain't sure..." he said slowly. "Seems like there's somethin' I got to do."
"Right now," Adams told him, "the only thing you've got to do is heal up and rebuild your strength. Think you might be up to eatin' somethin'?"
Jess considered that, and a loud growl from somewhere south of his waist brought a flush to his cheeks. Adams chuckled wryly. "Guess I had my answer," he said, and stood up to open the door on Jess's left and speak through the crack. "Miz Peters? Would you send over to Delmonico's and tell 'em our patient's ready for some food? They know what to fix."
"Right away, Doctor," came a woman's voice in response, and Jess heard another door open and shut.
Doc turned back to the bed. "We'll have somethin' up here in twenty minutes or less," he promised. "If you make good progress, we might be able to move you out of here in a day or two, and put you in Miz Jenks's boarding house while you finish convalescing—I want to get you out of this bed in case I need it for somebody who's really sick. The Marshal wants to talk to you when you're strong enough, but you're my patient first, and he knows better than to push; he's been where you are a couple of times already."
"Marshal?" Jess repeated, his brows pulling together in confusion. "Is that Dillon? Am I in trouble?"
"If you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you," Adams replied tartly. "It's entirely normal, in a concussion case, to have a certain degree of memory loss regardin' the events directly surrounding the injury. Best thing in your situation is to let the memories come back at their own speed. But you're in no danger of jail, that I'll say."
"Can you... can somebody let Mr. Brackett know I'm here?" Jess asked. "If I been out two days, he's likely wonderin' what's come of me—I only said I was gonna spend an evenin' in town."
"He knows," the doctor told him. "He wanted you to know he'd hold your gear till you could get out to the camp for it. And your horse is in Moss Grimmick's stable, right where you put him."
Again Jess frowned as that vague memory drifted through his mind. Trav... somethin' to do with Trav... he'd gone back to the barn to get him and ride back out to the camp... no, it was no good; try though he might, he couldn't make the details come—the effort only made his head ache, and he barely suppressed a gasp of pain.
Half an hour later he was sitting up against a stack of pillows, slowly feeding himself—since there was nothing the matter with his arms—on a strong soup that tasted like it was made with wild turkey and antelope, with thick-sliced fresh bread on the side, and hot boiled sassafrass tea; he'd a lot rather have had coffee, but he'd dealt with doctors enough to have developed a certain canniness in such matters. Mrs. Peters, who was Doc's favorite practical nurse, brought a razor and soap and gave him a shave; his reflection in the small mirror she held up before him showed a bandage bound around his head, but no visible bruising or other sign of injury. By this time, to his embarrassment, he was feeling close to wiped out, and after the doc had checked him over a second time he soon drifted off to sleep again.
That evening there was chicken stew and chilled custard, and in the morning a breakfast of cornmeal mush with scraps of meat in it and soft-scrambled eggs on toast. In between he mostly slept, occasionally rousing sufficiently as to be aware of Mrs. Peters sitting in the chair with her knitting needles clicking busily in the warm glow of the oil lamp or the white light of sunshine falling through the curtains. But every time he woke he felt stronger and his headache seemed a little easier.
On the second day after he'd regained consciousness, Doc brought a couple of men upstairs and they lifted him out of the bed and into a canvas stretcher lined with another warm quilt, which they then wrapped around him for the journey. They carried him down the stairs, put him in a buckboard lined with feather ticks, and took him about three blocks to the boarding house where he was to complete his convalescence. He was assured that Trav had been moved out of Grimmick's barn and lodged in the smaller one that the boarders there used for their mounts. Mrs. Jenks, the landlady, was a lean, severe-looking, schoolteacherish lady with octagonal silver-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, but she proved to be an experienced nurse who could be strict or compassionate according to need—and an excellent cook whose bounteous meals rapidly began to restore his strength. And on a straight chair in the corner of his room hung his shirt and jeans, vest and jacket, with his gloves on the seat, his hat and gunbelt hung over the uprights, and his boots standing like soldiers alongside. The thing that troubled him was that he didn't see his money belt or wallet—or his Colt in the holster. But maybe his valuables had been put in some secure place to protect them from thievery, and since he'd had a head injury, maybe they were reluctant to leave a weapon where he could get hold of it.
He learned differently two days after his relocation. He heard the voices before the people speaking reached his room: Mrs. Jenks's higher-pitched protestations climbing against the deeper tones of a man, breaking apart into intelligible words: "...said he wasn't to be excited or upset!"
"I can guess what Doc said, Mrs. Jenks," the man replied, "but if I don't find out what happened to him, I won't have a hope of runnin' down whoever did it. All I've got so far is a guess, and whether it's a right one or not, the man involved has had almost a week to get out of the country." The door opened, and Jess turned his head on the pillows—he was sitting up in bed most of the day now, dozing off and on, playing endless games of solitaire on the bed-tray, and occasionally practicing some of his poker tricks for variety—to find the frame filled with the towering shape of the man who'd been pointed out to him, when he and Pete first came through Dodge last summer, as Matt Dillon. Close up, he was even more impressive than at a distance, past six and a half feet with his boots and hat adding still more height, broad-shouldered, with a long, heavy jaw and a wide brow fringed with dark curls; he'd have been intimidating, to many men in just the happy stage of getting liquored up, even without his badge or any kind of weapon. He didn't tie his holster down, as Jess did, but Jess had heard enough of his reputation to know that Dillon was fast enough—and better yet, as Dixie had pointed out long ago, accurate enough—not to need to. He'd decided that he'd hate to have to live—or die—on the difference between his own speed and eye and the lawman's.
"Well," he said, "I reckon you'd be Marshal Dillon." He tilted his head to the side. "Heard tell you was fetched up in Texas. You don't sound like it."
"Was, just the same," the bigger man retorted. He turned to Mrs. Jenks, who was trying to peer past him and estimate whether her guest was in any shape to have visitors. "Would you mind, ma'am?"
Somewhat to Jess's surprise—lady boardinghouse keepers, in his experience, tended to have a good deal of spirit, since they had to deal with all kinds of humanity of all ages and both genders, and would get themselves trampled all over in short order if they got a name for giving in easily—she retreated, and Dillon stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. He looked around, pulled up a fine cherry rocker, and set it alongside the bed. "All right," he began, "we're both Texans, so there's no need for us to dance around each other. Do you remember what happened to put you here?"
Jess hesitated only a moment. "No, I reckon not. Doc won't tell me, neither. Says I got to get it back on my own."
"Well, I'm gonna have to disappoint him," Dillon replied. "Moss Grimmick and his stablehand found you just a week ago, lyin' in the centerway of the barn, outside the stall where your horse had been put. You'd been cracked over the head—which you know—and it looked like somebody'd made off with a money belt from under your clothes. Your sixgun was missing too."
Jess gasped and squeezed his eyes shut as the words ripped through the dark curtain behind which that vague memory-picture had been prowling to and fro ever since he first regained consciousness. He heard again the rustle of what he'd presumed to be rats in the straw, a faint sound of a footfall that he'd mistaken, for a vital moment, for a horse stamping softly in its stall, Trav's snort of alarm; felt himself turn as reflexes dictated defense, and knew that only this had saved him—his assailant had taken his aim based on where Jess had been standing a moment earlier, but his shift in position and the cushioning effect of his Stetson had blunted the effect of the blow just enough. Felt the clubbing force of the gun barrel against the back of his head, the terrific flare of pain, the packed-clay floor coming up to hit him in the face, and saw in the instant before darkness enveloped him Pete Morgan's face, clearly limned in the light of the lantern he'd fired up to saddle by, as he started to turn his victim over...
"Morgan!" he choked out, half shock and half rage. "Morgan! He must'a' been waitin'—he clouted me one—"
"Is that Pete Morgan?" Dillon inquired. "Brackett came in a few hours later and said he'd been missed at breakfast, like yourself—the difference bein' that he hadn't asked for the evening off like you had."
"Yeah," said Jess, his voice harsh. "Pete Morgan—my partner! That no-good, two-timin', backstabbin' son of a— I'll kill him!"
The marshal nodded, as if this merely confirmed something he already knew. "We found this in your vest—I've been holdin' it for you in my office safe," he said, reaching under his jacket for what Jess immediately recognized as his own battered old leather billfold. "Couple of letters in it, a bill of sale for your horse, a tintype of you and another man—Brackett says it's Morgan; no money."
"Don't keep much in it," Jess told him. "Five, ten at a time, maybe. Rather take coin when I can."
"Like most cowboys," Dillon agreed with a nod. "But you did have a money belt?"
"Yeah," Jess breathed. "I reckon you heard of me same's I done you. You know a man in my line ends up with a pretty good-sized wad, times."
"How much?"
Jess thought for a moment. "With what I won in that poker game, 'round about two hundred forty, fifty dollars."
Again Dillon nodded, though Jess thought he saw a flicker of surprise pass through the lawman's eyes, as if he found it hard to understand why a gun with Jess's kind of name—the kind who routinely commanded $450 a month when he was working, or as much as $2800 for a single job—would have so little cash on him. He wouldn't know that Jess hadn't had a gun job in almost a year; hadn't even looked for one. "That's pretty close to what my witness thought. And the gun?"
"Colt Frontier .44. Ivory handle, nickel plate with silver chasin's, full-length barrel, sear and front sight filed off, action honed down." He snorted. "If Pete thinks it'll help him be any better a gun than he is by nature, he's dreamin'. Them buttplates was shaped custom to my hand. They won't fit him no better'n a corset and high-heeled slippers would." With a nod toward the chair that held his clothes: "You do me somethin', Marshal? Go feel around the inside seam of the linin' on my left boot. Oughtta be a little pocket in there. Tell me what you find."
Dillon did as he'd requested and held up a five-dollar gold piece. "Just this."
Jess sighed. " 'Least he didn't think to look for that. It's my emergency stash. Reckoned five dollars gold 'd be enough to pay for a night's room, breakfast, and horse keep and get a little grub for the trail, in case the cards go against me sometime." He looked around the room, wondering just what Mrs. Jenks charged for it and for Trav's stall in her barn, not to speak of what he must owe the doc.
"Do a lot of gambling, do you?" asked Dillon, carefully returning the quarter-eagle to its hiding place.
Jess smirked briefly. "Ain't gamblin' the way I do it."
"No," said Dillon thoughtfully, "I heard you were taught by Dixie Howard. So," he went on, "I guessed right? It was Morgan?"
"Said so, didn't I?" Jess was mad at himself almost as much as at Morgan. He should have been warier; he should have known Pete was no good. A man in his line had to be good at estimating character; it was how he decided whether a stranger might be a threat to him. He'd lost partners before, but he'd never had one actually ambush and rob him. What was you thinkin' of, Harper? he rebuked himself, and then: No, that's just the trouble—you wasn't thinkin'. You never have liked ridin' alone. Time was sure to come you'd want so much not to be that you'd take on the wrong kind of company. Like the doc told you, you're lucky to be alive. Maybe that'll teach you a lesson...
"Don't start fightin' your head with me, Harper," Dillon warned him. "I wasn't the one who rolled you, I'm just the man stuck with cleanin' up what he left."
"No," Jess retorted, "no, you ain't. That part of it's up to me, soon as I can move on. If like you say it's a week since Pete clouted me, he's had time enough to get better'n two hundred miles from here even on that roan plug he rides. Colorado line ain't but a hundred and twenty west, and Indian Territory ain't much more'n sixty south. I know you're a U.S. Marshal and you go where you're sent—but you was sent here. You can't be leavin' your town with no law, least of all now with all these dang buffalo hunters stompin' around, to run down a man who didn't do nothin' but make off with less'n three hundred dollars."
"He did a little more'n that," the lawman pointed out. "He came close to killin' you."
"Close don't count 'cept in horseshoes, my pa used to say," Jess observed, showing his teeth briefly. "Anyhow, I ain't one of the folks you been set to look after. Just a Texas saddle tramp that fell foul of another one. Cowtown law don't much care what us drifters does to each other—at least that's the way I've found it. And if he's got over the state line, west or south either one, you ain't got no authority to go after him anyhow, you know that as good as me. Only chance you'd have 'd be to put out a want on him, and without a pretty fair reward it wouldn't do no good. I sure ain't offerin' no five hundred dollars I ain't got, just to get back two-fifty and my sixgun."
It was true, of course, and he knew Dillon knew it. A U.S. Marshal was limited only by international boundaries—Canada and Mexico—but even within that vast expanse, he could arrest only for Federal offenses, unless, like Dillon, he was within his assigned area and functioning as a local officer, which often happened when a town or county was too poor or corrupt to have one of its own. He could, of course, be deputized by a fellow peace officer, or even wear a local and a Federal badge simultaneously; but even then, crimes against town or county ordinances or even state and Territorial law became a dead letter once outside the jurisdiction that had enacted them, which was why outlaws always tried first for a bolt to safety—and why bounty hunters (who weren't responsible to any formal authority) and reward posters existed. The marshal hesitated a moment, then sighed and shook his head. "No, I guess you can't. So?"
"So I'll be goin' after him, soon as the doc lets me ride. You know I got to, Dillon. We ain't all that different, you and me."
The marshal considered that for a moment, then said, almost casually, "I heard you already had some unfinished business—with the Bannister gang."
Jess's head snapped up. "Who told you that?" he asked sharply.
"Somebody who had a cousin at Wagon Fork," Dillon replied. "And I also heard you killed Steve and Bert Bannmister over east of here a couple of years ago." With a penetrating look: "Is it true, or have I got the wrong Jess Harper?"
Jess knew Dillon had to be older than he was—he'd heard tell the man had been wearing a badge while Jess was still wrangling cavvy for Wind Vane—but at that moment he felt like he had about a hundred years on the lawman. "Yeah," he said in a flat voice, his face cold and bleak. "Yeah, it's true. Though by the way I hear it, there ain't only Frank left of them that was there that day, and they put him in the Wyomin' Territorial Prison last year, for mail robbery. Don't reckon they're fixin' to let me in to have a crack at him even if I do got a prior claim."
"No," Dillon agreed mildly, "I wouldn't say so."
"I'll get him," Jess went on grimly. "Someday, somehow, I'll get him, 'cause it was his outfit and he's responsible. Like I told Dixie, if it takes me thirty years, I'll get him, 'cause what else do I got to live for? He took everythin' from me, Dillon—my home, my family, my future. He owes me, and I aim to collect. But I can wait, he can wait; he ain't goin' nowhere a good spell, 'less he breaks out, and meantime I got a name to protect—and that's about all that's left to me. So like I said, I'll be goin' after Pete. I got to."
"Brackett said he wouldn't like to be in Morgan's boots once you found out what he'd done," Dillon mentioned. "I see what he meant now."
**SR**
Doc Adams stopped by late that afternoon, on his way back to his office from his day's rounds. "Mrs. Jenks tells me Matt Dillon was here today," he noted, as he checked Jess's vitals and examined the place on the back of his head where Morgan had hit him.
The Texan eyed him half resignedly, half humorously. "Reckoned maybe she would. He said you wouldn't like it, Doc, but I remember now."
"How you came to be in my care, you mean?"
"Yeah." The word was little more than a sigh. "If somebody else'd come along in time to stop him makin' off with my money belt... but they didn't." Harper looked up. "I can't pay you, Doc," he said quietly. "Can't pay no boardin'house neither... 'less I sell Traveller, maybe."
Doc had met enough cowboys to know that, while "selling one's saddle" was regarded as a sign that a man was emotionally and financially at the bottom, selling a cowpony was almost as bad: a man's horse was likely to be his closest friend and his only partner. "You'll do nothin' of the sort," he retorted. "How will you look for work if you don't have a horse to ride?"
"Wasn't thinkin' on that," the young Texan replied darkly. "Was thinkin' on Morgan. Got to get after him 'fore his trail goes cold as stone." Something about the hard set of his features suggested that he'd had some experience with cold trails before.
"Now listen, young feller," Adams said firmly. "If you think you're the only man I've ever had to treat on tick, you're settin' yourself way too high. Why, I probably carry half of southwest Kansas on my books."
"But that's different," Harper objected. "They're local folks. You see 'em regular, you know where they live. Me... you might not ever see me again."
"That's true," Doc agreed. "But you're a Texan, and I haven't met a Texan yet who didn't set a lot of store by keepin' his word. If you give me yours that you'll send me the money when you have it, that'll be enough for me."
Harper peered up at him past his curiously slanted eyebrows, his expression half wary, half relieved. "You ain't joshin' me none?"
"I'm not only not joshin' you, I'll stand good for you with Miz Jenks, and you can pay her back the same way," Doc told him. "Now don't say anything, son. It's not your fault you're in this spot."
"Don't make it no easier to take charity," Harper muttered. "You got my word, Doc. You and Miz Jenks both. If it takes me five years, I'll get that money and I'll get it to you."
**SR**
Two weeks passed. Pushing himself as hard as he dared, clashing occasionally with his landlady and his physician, Jess Harper began sitting up part of the day, then walking up and down the corridor that led from Mrs. Jenks's kitchen, past his first-floor room, to the parlor, then circling the back yard and stopping to look in on Traveller in the barn, and at last slowly making his way from Bridge Street, where the house stood, across Tin Pot Alley and down another block to Front Street.
It was early afternoon when Kitty Russell saw a remembered form step into the main barroom of the Long Branch and pause, moving quietly to one side of the doors, in the classic fashion of a gunfighter checking out his surroundings. The lean angular face beneath the curled sweep of black hatbrim, the deep-blue eyes still shadowed by a hint of pain even though the bandage was long gone, the grace and balance of his poise and movements, the soft green flannel shirt tucked into brown jeans, the black leather gloves, the worn black vest and blanket-lined canvas brush coat hanging open to reveal the lack of a gunbelt, and the long-shanked Texas spurs, their plain silver highly polished, all reminded her of the evening she'd first seen him quietly nursing his whiskey at the bar and taking the measure of the various games in progress, the subtle yet unmistakeably professional way he'd controlled everything that happened at his chosen table for the next few hours... and the news she'd heard from Matt, the next morning, of what had befallen him afterward.
He crossed to the bar and ordered a beer. She noticed that despite his grace—both inborn and trained, she thought—there was still a hint of painful awkwardness in the way he moved. She had seen Matt move the same way, when he'd been laid up a while and not wearing his gun: a man got so used to packing iron on one hip that he felt off balance without it.
Kitty had sometimes thought that one wounded soul can somehow tell another. Certainly she felt that behind those midnight-blue eyes there was a lot of old piled-up hurt, a lot of disappointment and loss and memories he'd rather be shut of. And although she'd had to cultivate a tough outer shell in order to survive the world in which she moved—as she expected he had too—she felt, intuitively, that he, like herself, wasn't anywhere near as hard inside as he wanted others to believe. "I'll have what the gentleman is having, Red," she told the bartender, moving quietly up on the Texan's right side; of course she knew that no man in his line would tolerate someone he didn't thoroughly know and trust being on his vulnerable left.
"Ma'am?" He lifted a hand to his hatbrim.
"I don't know if you remember me," she said. "My name's Kitty—Kitty Russell. I was here the night you got into that poker game. And I told Matt Dillon how much you'd won, when he came around asking the next day."
"You'd be that witness he mentioned," young Harper guessed. "I reckon you had your duty to do, you bein' a citizen of Dodge and all." And, with a hint of a smile: "I do recollect you, ma'am. Ain't many ladies got your color hair—none in this place that I took note of that night. Name's Jess Harper."
"I know." They shook hands, hers almost disappearing in his glove. Red fetched her beer and they sipped companionably for a moment. "I heard about what happened," she told him then. "I've been raked over the coals by people I trusted a time or two. I know it probably doesn't help, but I thought you'd like to know there was someone around who had some idea of what it feels like."
"I'm obliged," he murmured. "I don't rightly know how it happens, but seems I ain't got no luck pickin' trail-partners. Always goes sour in the end." There was a note in his voice that was sadness and anger, bitterness and resignation, all mixed together.
"You're going after this Morgan, aren't you?"
"Yes, ma'am. I got to. I know I ain't likely to get my money back—he's had near on a month to spend it, prob'ly made for Denver to have him a spree—but I can't let somethin' like that go by."
She looked pointedly at his right hip. "What are you going to use when you find him? You haven't got a gun."
"Yes, ma'am, I know. That's the other thing I got to get back if I can—that sixgun cost me forty good Yankee dollars, plus somethin' for the gunsmith to customize the grips and work on the balance." He paused a moment. "I been lookin' in the stores hereabouts—I can get a good wood-handled one for twelve, if it's plain black metal 'stead of blued. I was thinkin' maybe..." He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a silver hunting-case watch, quite plain, no engraving, no charms on the braided thong that hung from the stem-head ring. "This here run me twelve, maybe I can trade..."
Kitty held out her hand. "May I? I deal cards in here sometimes, and men get short and have to stake things like that—I've gotten pretty good at guessing what they're worth."
He handed it to her without hesitation. She turned it over, weighed it in her hand, put it to her ear to listen to the mechanism, popped the lid to see if it kept good time, then passed it back. "It's a good watch for what you paid," she said, "but you won't get twelve trade for it. It's got your initials on it."
"Dad-gum," he muttered, "I'd plumb forgot about that. Don't know why I had it done, don't bother mostly—" He looked at the watch, sighed and tucked it away. "What am I gonna do now? That watch and my saddle's about all I got that's worth anythin'... Doc said I wasn't to sell my horse, and I surely don't hanker to..."
He looked so lost, so bewildered and angry and miserable all at once, that it almost broke her heart. Without even thinking about it, she knew what she had to do. "Stay there," she said. "Don't stir one step from that spot—promise me!"
His midnight eyes watched her, brows tilted in puzzlement. "Ma'am?"
"Just promise, and I'll be right back."
"All right... I promise, I reckon..."
"Red," she told the bartender, "you see to it he stays put," and she began deftly threading her way through the crowd to the stairs. Jess Harper turned to watch her go, his expression still uncertain, then shrugged and returned his attention to his beer.
Ten minutes later, with a whisper of silk and a rustle of frothy petticoats, she was back at his side. "Give me your hand," she ordered.
He wasn't quite sure he liked the way this was going, but he'd been brought up in the Southern tradition of courtesy to women, and he did as she'd said. Deftly she slipped a twenty-dollar gold piece into his palm. "There," she said. "That will get you a gun, and a box or two of cartridges for it, and some supplies for the trail."
"Ma'am—" He looked up at her, realizing for the first time that in her high-heeled satin slippers she was almost as tall as he was in his socks, and his mobile brows angled in uncertainty. "Ma'am, I—I 'preciate it, but I can't take your money—I—"
"Listen," she said. "I told you I knew how it felt to find out that a friend could do you dirt, didn't I? Well, I also know what it's like to be broke and desperate. A couple of years ago I was stranded in San Francisco and a man lent me some money—a lot more than twenty dollars." At thirty-seven and a half cents a mile, stage fare to Yuma had been over $260, and Danny Wilson had thrown in some extra in case she got tired of the bumping and wanted to lay over somewhere, plus something to keep her in Yuma till she could find work; a good round $300, all told. "He told me I didn't have to worry about paying him back, ever. And I may never be able to—he was a drifter, like you, and I haven't seen him or heard from him since. So I've made myself a promise—that when I see someone who's in a place like I was, I'll help him if I can." Holding his wrist with one hand, she used the other to gently but firmly fold his fingers over the double eagle. "So that's what I'm doing, and I'll say to you what Danny said to me: you don't have to worry about paying me back, ever. Just you teach that so-called partner of yours better manners, and I'll be content," she added, her voice thinning with remembered anger.
Women so often didn't understand how it was, with a man and what he had to do. His own ma, much as they had loved each other, might not have. This one... she was special, and not just because of her spontaneous generosity. She could see how a man thought; she understood about honor and its obligations, about the importance of a name, especially when it was about all you had. He looked down at his closed hand, then met her eyes again, his own soft with shy worship. "Yes, ma'am. I'll sure do that, and I thank you."
**SR**
April 4 (Jess's 25th birthday):
A week after this exchange, Jess slowly climbed the outside stairs to Doc Adams's office over Jonas's general store. Through the sheer curtain on the door-pane he could see a shadowy form moving about inside. He turned the knob and stepped in, the faint ring of his spurs the only sound he made.
Doc turned from restocking one of the glass-fronted drug cabinets that stood against his front-office walls, eyes going first to his visitor's face for recognition, then slipping down to take in the open brush jacket, the flare-bottomed fringe-trimmed chaps pulled up over his jeans, and the plain black shell belt slanting across his flat middle, the simple walnut handle of a basic Colt .44 jutting out of the holster. "So," he said. "You're goin'."
"It's been four weeks, Doc. I was taught four weeks make a month. You said I could ride after a month." There was a hint of stiff-necked defiance in the tone, in the lean features. "I can't wait no longer. Likely the best chance I got is that Pete prob'ly thinks he killed me, so he won't be coverin' his tracks."
"Got any notion where to start?" Doc asked.
"Told Miss Kitty, with that kind of money in his pocket, best chance he'd make for Denver. Lots of cattlemen reckon it's the only city worth visitin' between Chicago and 'Frisco, and it's got a reputation for bein' a wide-open sportin' town. Don't matter what a man's line is, he's got fair odds of makin' some money there, most of all if he's got a stake already."
"A stolen stake," observed Adams, and sighed. "I reckon I can't stop you short of pullin' a gun on you. I just hope you know what you're doin'."
"Us Harpers takes a lot of killin', Doc. You should'a' got that figured out by now," said Jess, with a hint of a smile. "Main reason I come by... I'm wantin' to know what I owe you and Miz Jenks."
"Well, that's fair," Doc allowed. "Can't expect you to keep your word without knowin' what you've promised to send us." He crossed to his desk and searched briefly through a couple of pigeonholes. "All right. Here's the bill I made up for you—it's twenty-five dollars altogether. Then I had Miz Jenks write me out a guest tab for room, meals, and horse keep; runs $10.75 for a week, since you didn't claim parlor privileges, so that's forty-three for four weeks' time. I wrote it down here at the bottom, so you'd have it for reference."
Jess took the two small slips of paper, glanced over them, and drew his billfold from inside his vest, tucking them carefully away behind the envelope that held Trav's bill of sale. "I'll sure say you know your business, Doc. Ain't often had such good takin' care of."
"Just don't overextend yourself," Doc warned him, "or you'll undo all my work. Take it a little easy; try not to do more than forty miles a day for at least another week, and get all the sleep you can. If medical science had some way to look inside a hurt body and see how it's healin'—" He shrugged. "Well, maybe in a hundred years or so."
A grim look settled briefly on Jess's features. "I ain't honin' to be dead till I get a chance to settle up with that..." He paused, as if no epithet he could think of was quite virulent enough to encompass his feelings, and his hands flexed restlessly in his soft black leather gloves, thumbs rubbing against forefingers. "Don't you fret none on me, Doc. I'm a Texan. We're tough."
"Good luck, then," said Doc, and offered his hand. They shook briefly, and then Jess turned quietly away and left as much without fanfare as he'd entered.
**SR**
He'd stocked up on as many supplies as he could afford, out of the seven dollars that had been left of Kitty Russell's double eagle after he'd bought his gun and an extra box of shells, and was tying his grub sack to the fork of his saddle when he saw Dillon and Kitty coming up the boardwalk. He hid his amusement as he observed that they weren't holding hands, weren't even too close together, just trying to look like casual acquaintances who happened to be going in the same direction. In this last week, getting around town more, he'd stopped in at the Long Branch quite a few times, and while he didn't think Dillon would appreciate the fact—what Miss Kitty would think he wasn't sure—he had more than a fair picture of what they were to each other. They were pretty good at keeping it under wraps, but they weren't used to dealing with a man who'd been trained in reading patterns as Dixie had trained him.
He gave the string a last tug, ducked under Trav's neck and stepped up onto the walk in front of them. "Miss Kitty," he said, politely touching his hatbrim. "Marshal."
The woman looked him over as Doc had, taking in jacket and chaps and gunbelt, and from there glanced to the waiting bay, with saddlebags, blanket roll, slicker and carbine all neatly in place on the saddle. "Jess. You're going, then?"
"Yes, ma'am. Like I told the doc, can't waste no more time. Reckon I'm about as healed up as I'm like to get." He glanced past her shoulder, up at Dillon's solemn face. "I ain't apologizin' for nothin' I said, Marshal. It was plain truth and you know that. But I ain't unappreciatin' of the effort you made... me bein' just a passin'-through stranger in your town, and somethin' I reckon you ain't got much use for besides."
The lawman nodded slowly. "I said a couple of things I shouldn't have, maybe. Your reputation's not half as bad as some, Harper. And nobody deserves to have a partner do them like Morgan did you, no matter who or what they are. I hope you find him."
"He ain't got no notion what he's put on his tail," Jess growled softly. "But he'll see, come the time." With another touch of his hatbrim: "Ma'am," and he turned toward the tethered horse.
"Jess?"
He paused, looked back. "Ma'am?"
"Jess," Kitty said slowly, "do you remember what you told me in the Long Branch, about having no luck at choosing trail-partners?"
"Yes, ma'am. Wasn't complainin'. Just tellin' the truth."
"I know that. But, you know, every losing streak ends eventually. Maybe now that you've actually been betrayed by someone you thought you could trust, it's time for your luck to change. Maybe you should be on the lookout for something... something better, something different."
He tilted his head and looked at her quizzically, as if what she'd said had reminded him of something half forgotten. She, of course, could have no way of knowing about the Blackfoot chief Wolf Sleeping who, a year and a half ago, had dreamed of "a white man who has been chosen to be your brother." She didn't realize that her suggestion had brought the memory of the Indian's words to the front of Jess's mind—or that he was wondering whether Dillon had told her about the Bannisters.
"Maybe I should," he said, after a moment's consideration. And then: "I won't be forgettin' what you done, Miss Kitty. Anytime you need help, you holler, and this here Panhandle boy'll come a-runnin'." A nod to the big man behind her, and he unwrapped the reins from the rail and went up into the saddle with his trademark brisk hop. Matt and Kitty stood and watched as he turned the bay westward up Front Street and nudged it into a fast-shuffling trot.
"Kitty?"
"What, Matt?"
"He said he 'wouldn't be forgetting what you did.' What did you do?"
She smiled. "A girl has to have some secrets, Matt. Even from the law. Let's just say he's not the only one who knows something about... obligations. And that I've started paying forward on mine, just as he's gone to pay back on his."
Fourteen months later:
"Miss Kitty? I was pickin' up th'office mail, and they had this one for you—said I'd fetch it over—"
"Thank you, Chester." Kitty took the envelope he held out to her. "Jack, draw Chester a beer, will you? Seems pretty warm for the time of year..."
Chester grinned shyly and bellied up to the bar as a frothy mug was set before him. Kitty frowned at the handwriting, a muddy scrawl, clearly masculine, that she didn't recognize—Miss Kitty Russell, Long Branch Saloon, Dodge City, Kansas—and at the postmark, which was too blurred to read. She tore the flap open and unfolded the single sheet of cheap paper inside. The spelling was no better than the script, but after diligent study she managed to make it out.
June 2, 1871
Dear Miss Kitty,
I'm hopin you aint moved on, I know ladies in your line is like to be drifters too, but maybe if you have therell be somebody thatll know where to send this on to. I just wanted to let you know I held in mind what you told me, and I done found that somethin better you said I'd ought to be watchin for. I been puttin off writin you about it, more'n a year now, cause I was a-scared it wasnt for real and couldnt last, but I come around to knowin now that it is and it will.
I'm stayin on a little cow spread and stage stop called Sherman Ranch, two brothers owns it—Slims a couple years older'n me and Andys comin up thirteen and a half. Them and their—I reckon youd maybe say uncle, Jonesy, he cooks and does the washin and yardwork and such—done took me in the same day I got here, bout a month after I pulled outa Dodge. Lookin at me, youd say I was just a hired hand earnin my thirty a month, but that aint so. Slim give me a bunk under his roof, a place at his table, his friendship and his trust, and Jonesys been feedin me up better'n I knowed in years, and Andy, he looks at me like I was another brother. Theyve saved my life once or twice and my sanity too maybe, and I know I found a home and a family, though I aint told them so yet. I aint made it easy on em, I even left a few times, but whenever I do I can feel somethin tuggin at me, callin me back, and I know this place is where I belong.
I mighta never stayed on when Slim offered me the job, if hadnt been for what you said, but that put me in mind of somethin somebody else told me a while back, about somebody thatd been picked out to be my brother. So I owe you again, and I reckoned youd ought to know.
I found Morgan, and like I figured hed done spent my money, but I got my gun back leastways. Only I aint wearin it no more, I put it away in a safe place and I use the one I bought with the money you give me. Maybe thats part what reminds me, when I ride out, that I got to go back.
I aint sendin you the twenty, cause like you said I dont got to be in a hurry about it, and anyhow you doin that led me to somethin I cant never pay you for just with money. So like I told you that last day, you ever need the kind of help I can give, you holler. You can reach me at Sherman Ranch, Laramie, Wyomin.
You please to give the doc my best, and know I wont be forgettin you.
Best wishes,
Jess Harper
PS: I know the Marshal knows about the Bannisters and what they done to us Harpers, so you tell him—that debts cleared. It wasnt me done it, but I was there when it happened, and Frank Bannister wont be hurtin nobody, ever again.
JH.
Kitty quickly wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and smiled as she carefully folded the letter, put it back in the envelope and tucked both into the bosom of her dress. "Jack," she called to the bartender, "pour me a glass of that Tennessee Walkin' Whiskey. There's a toast I want to drink." To drifters, she added silently, looking around at the saloon that was now half hers and thinking of a tall long-legged man with a badge, and to finding your home.
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