Something About That Cowboy
Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold.
If you don't understand him, an' he don't die young, he'll prob'ly just ride away.
Cowboys like smoky old poolrooms and clear mountain mornings, little warm puppies and children and girls of the night.
Them that don't know him won't like him and them that do,sometimes won't know how to take him.
He ain't wrong, he's just different but his pride won't let him,do things to make you think he's right.
Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
'Cos they'll never stay home and they're always alone.
Even with someone they love.
Excerpts from Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, by Waylon Jennings
I rose at an early hour for any 22 year-old who doesn't live outside town, but especially early for one who's half owner of the Long Branch to watch Matt ride away with Chester. However, I had to because if I didn't I might never see him again. What superstitious nonsense! I'm a practical girl. How else did I get where I am at such a young age – a successful businesswoman? Then again, I am from New Orleans. Matt Dillon does what he wants, with whomever he wants, male or female, child or adult, yet always going his own lonely way. He'll stay away or return on his terms. Just like he left. Anyway, for now, secret thought it may be, I'm his girl and I want that to continue.
This time he's not heading off to hunt in the mountains where mornings are clearer than the dust-filled streets of Dodge City to perhaps decide it suits him more than town life. It would take a series of catastrophic events for him to go back on his sworn word. The oath he swore when he put on the badge of a United States Marshal is the reason he's riding out with his assistant Chester Goode. He'll make every effort to get back with his man unless he's forced to kill or be killed. Yet part of me can't help believing that by watching him go I can prevent that last possibility. Watching ensures Carey Post, the man he's after, or someone like him, doesn't end his life at the age of 29. I owe it to my cowboy. Post could have killed him while Matt's arms were filled with my packages on Front Street but he was too drunk to do more than shoot the lawman in front of him in the left shoulder.
Considering the 100-mile distance, it's silly to worry about him until he's been gone at least a week, but I can't help it. I know his shoulder's still stiff. He tried not to show it and of course wouldn't talk about it but I know he can't let a murderer get away. He's got to go because the man who shot him and fled to Elkader is on a wanted poster. I may not know everything about my cowboy or understand everything he does but it's what I've come to expect in the three years since I first laid eyes on him and decided to stay in this ugly, dusty, unless it's muddy, town instead of continuing on west.
"Was that Matt leaving with Chester?" Doc asked as he took my elbow, startling me out of my reverie, as Matt and Chester rode nearly out of sight. "If you're not sleepwalking you could join me for a quiet breakfast."
"Oh, sorry, Doc. Yeah, that would be nice."
Spending time with Doc when I wasn't working helped fill in the time. He wasn't Matt, nobody was, but he listens when I talk to him and understands. Being the town doctor his patients come to him at their most vulnerable. Matt and I are no exceptions. Sometimes I imagine talking to Doc is what other girls are able to do with their fathers.
"Doc, has he been gone long enough for me to worry about him and Chester as well?" I asked him during dinner a week later. "Have you heard anything?"
He'd swallowed his last mouthful of antelope and had begun to answer me when a nester I'd seen only once rushed through the door. He pushed past customers eating at other tables without regard to the disruption he was causing until he breathlessly stopped at ours.
"Doctor Adams, I'm glad I found you! It's my Emma. She's in a terrible way. I think it's her time."
"Mark, tell Moss I need my buggy and bring it 'round to my office while I get my bag. Kitty," he added. "Come with me. I think it's time I showed you how to help me deliver a baby."
I'd been lost in a daydream of Chester interrupting yet another meal with Matt. Neither of them was here. This time Mark Clemens, a young man who'd been in the Long Branch on a few Saturday nights, was interrupting and I wasn't being left behind to maybe lose Matt forever. Doc actually thought I could help. I snapped out of my reverie to follow Doc up the stairs to his office and prepare for our short trip.
Emma gave birth to a healthy boy two hours after we reached their homestead a few miles upriver. There were no complications with the birth but, even so, there was a lot for me to learn during my first lesson in nursing/midwifery. Despite the fact bringing a new life into the world was seemingly unrelated to digging a bullet out or setting a broken limb, my thoughts soon returned to the times I'd helped Doc do just that with Matt lying on his operating table. It didn't help that the couple decided to name their son Matthew Chester after his and her fathers.
Two lonely weeks after the Clemens baby was born I spotted Matt and Chester, Carey Post between them, plodding wearily down Front Street toward the jail. It was difficult to tell from the quick glimpse I caught of them between the time a couple of regulars entered followed by the rapidly closing batwing doors whether it was the three men or their horses who were the more tired. Now that he was back, I returned to concentrating on keeping my customers happy, serving drinks and offering encouraging words while Bill tended bar. A half hour later I was busy bringing a bottle and glasses to four of our local businessmen playing a friendly game of poker so I didn't notice anyone standing outside eyeing the room. I would have missed Matt, free from trail dust and facial stubble, enter if he hadn't spoken.
"Jim, is this your pup? He nearly got trampled on," Matt said stroking the frightened young dog cradled against his side with his large hand to calm him.
"Thanks Marshal. I'm not used to him following me everywhere. It's only been a week since Mr. Teeters let me pick him from the just weaned litter he had in his barbershop," Jim Wilson the 18-year-old feed store clerk replied, taking the proffered pup from Matt.
Matt's eyes left Jim and the pup to scan the room again. His face broke into that irresistible boyish grin as our eyes met and he made his way toward me standing at the bar having just put down my now empty tray. I answered with my own smile, delighted that he was back.
"Any trouble in here while I was gone?"
"It's good to see you too, Cowboy. I saw you found Post. You want to tell me about it?"
"Not now, but I would like a beer before I do my rounds. Maybe we could have supper tomorrow?" he managed to add to our very general conversation over our drinks before he was ready to leave. "See yah later, Kitty."
He did see me later. As usual when he's in town he made the Long Branch his last stop, arriving just before closing. I told Bill I'd lock up since the chairs were already stacked on the tables and nearly everything was put away. As soon as he left, Matt locked the front door and then the side door that also leads to the basement and back door while I put the day's take in the office safe until either Bill or I deposited it in the bank in the morning. When he joined me we headed for the stairs, dousing or turning down the lights as we went, carrying our nightcaps with us.
His movements were slow and deliberate as we proceeded from sipping our whiskey to undressing to joining together in the bed. My cowboy was back and I couldn't resist him. Talk about what was bothering him would have to wait.
Both of us were physically spent, but Matt pushed the pillows on his side against the headboard so he was more sitting up than lying down. I snuggled against his chest as content as a woman can be when she's involved with a man like mine. His fingers absentmindedly played with my hair where it lay covering the nipple beneath. I couldn't believe he wanted to start up again, but this time I misread him.
"Kit, I destroyed a man in Elkader."
"Post deserved whatever you had to do to him so you could bring him back to Dodge."
"I did nothing more to Post than knock him on the head with my gun when he resisted arrest. Nope, I destroyed a good man who was the reason Post wasn't around when Chester and I got there."
"I don't understand. You're not the kind of man who deliberately destroys someone just to get what he wants."
"Aren't I? Just ask some of the citizens of Ford County who can't do things the same way they used to or do anything at all because of me."
"I know you've got your own way of doin' things that aren't always liked. If I didn't accept you as you are we wouldn't be together in this bed, but I don't understand why stopping a man who was keeping you from arresting a man who nearly killed you bothers you."
"Joe Phy was living a lie, pretending to be a US Marshal, but he was doing a credible job of keeping the peace. I turned him into a homeless, broken laughing stock just so I could get my man."
"Oh, Matt," I sighed trying to convey that, although he hurt someone, he still sympathized with that man and regretted doing it because his pride didn't allow him to let the man know why he did what he'd done.
The next morning he left early to return by the back alleys to his office as if he'd spent the night in his room with the outside entrance at Ma Smalley's Boardinghouse. I accept it as part of what we do so he can think nobody knows we're anything more than friends. Far too many see through that charade. They still manage to get to him through me. Meanwhile, I remain in this cow town on the Arkansas River where the Santa Fe Railroad has its westernmost station, its stockyards bursting with cattle waiting to be shipped east for slaughter during the long, yet profitable season, with Matt. For now I've committed myself to him and this town he protects enough to become half owner of the classiest saloon west of the Missouri River and east of San Francisco.
I don't know our future but I dream that someday, like those train tracks, our lives will expand. That could mean building a home and raising a family here in Dodge, elsewhere or not anywhere at all. For now I'm content to let things play out however they do. I reckon you could call it love and it might grow. I accept his job is his life, but that he still wants to be with me. Unlike other men I've known he doesn't feel he has the right to own and control me. I may be a saloon girl but he treats me the same as a banker's daughter with one exception – he doesn't love a banker's daughter.
Something in the way he movesattracts me like no other lover.
Something in the way he woos me…
I don't want to leave him now.
You know I believe and how.
Somewhere in his smile he knowsthat I don't need no other lover.
Something in his style that shows me…
You're asking me will my love grow?
I don't know, I don't know.
You stick around now it may show.
I don't know, I don't know.
Something in the way he knowsand all I have to do is think of him.
Something in the things he shows me
Adapted excerpts from Something in the Way She Moves, by George Harrison