This is Matt and Kitty's story as seen through her eyes. Some of it recounts scenes that doc already described, but here they are as she sees them.
This story includes some characters from Gunsmoke, and some of my own. They seem to play well together. It is not written for financial gain, just for the satisfaction of telling a story.
The Black Bag
Chapter 1, (Prologue)
Kitty
It was a long quiet journey back to Baltimore after Doc's funeral, everyone hiding in their own thoughts. The train had left Dodge early in the morning. Kevin had bought the tickets, and the train depot was so empty that I am sure very few people saw us, and none of those that did knew who we were.
It was almost sad to see the city that we once knew so well. So much of our lives and so many of our memories were there on its dusty streets and in its wooden buildings. It had changed beyond belief, much quieter in many ways, more stores, cleaner saloons and fewer cowboys.
We had been unable to get sleeper cars, so most of the time, between visits to the dining car, we dozed or sat and looked at each other. The trip took the best part of four days and by the time we reached Baltimore, we were all feeling pretty tired as well as dirty from the soot and smoke of the engine. I noticed Matt was having a lot of trouble with his back after sitting in those seats for so many hours and I was glad Kevin was there to help us.
It was mid afternoon before we got back to Kevin's home near the university. Russ – Russell Mathew Dillon, had been staying with Marilyn and the boys while we were gone. Our friends had two sons, one a few months older than Russ, who himself was just coming up for his 8th birthday, and the other a couple of years younger. Marilyn was pregnant with a third child. I was somewhat envious, having wanted another myself, but I knew we had left it a little too late. Even so Russ was a pleasure, and it made me proud to watch him grow and develop his own ways. A lot of them were like his father, he was quietly determined in everything he did, he had an innate sense of justice and generally wanted to set the world to rights. Sadly I could also see occasions when he showed some of my temper, but he was trying to learn how to control it.
Russ went to help Kevin with our bags. When everything had been brought to the house, he went back to check the wagon and found Doc's black medical bag under the front seat. I saw how he picked it up and looked at it, almost like it meant as much to him as it did to Matt and I.
Kevin had told my husband to go lie down for a while and take the weight off his back. Of course Matt protested but after a while I noticed he did just that. He said he planned to go to the office tomorrow, but I didn't think he would make it – it would mean a five-hour ride, and half of that on horseback.
We spent the night there in Baltimore. In the morning Russ hitched up the team and Matt let him drive us out to the ranch. He still said he had to go into the office because we had been gone about ten days and the paper work would be building up but by the time we got home he found things to do and justified to himself not having to head out till the next morning.
Our lives got back on schedule. Matt hung Doc's shingle over the mantle, and Russ asked endless questions about it and the black medical bag we had brought home.
A couple of months went by and then one evening Matt returned with a large envelope. He placed it on his desk in the small room we had designated as his office at home. It was a Friday and Russ had gone to stay with Kevin's boys for the night so the house was quiet. We had finished supper, Matt built up a nice fire in the hearth then got the envelope and asked me to come sit by him on the settee – it was the one I had had in my rooms at the Long Branch. Somehow we had managed to get it and the old brass bed, along with some smaller items, shipped out here without attracting attention. Those two pieces of furniture held so many memories for us both that we could not have let them disappear from our lives.
He opened the envelope and handed the thick stack of papers to me.
As I looked at the first few lines I realized what it was. I recognized Doc's careful script.
"Where did this come from?" I asked him. My voice was almost cracking with emotion.
"Apparently Doc had left it. Dr. Hollister had written some words of his own at the end, then he sent it to some printers he knew, here at the University, to get copies made. They all got sent back to Dodge but he wanted you and me to have the original. He figured Newly would know how to get it to us."
"Newly didn't send it to you directly did he?"
"No he did what I told him to do if he needed to get something to me. Addressed it to the Director of the Marshal's Service, no other name, and sent it with a bunch of reports and other official stuff. That's how it finished up on my desk." He paused.
"I thought we could sit here and read it together. Hollister was good enough to send us a printed copy along the original."
Matt moved closer, put his arm around my shoulders, and we began to read Doc's words. It was surprising to realize that even after all those years we knew so very little about his background.
Matt remembered the day he himself first rode into Dodge with that shiny new star on his chest. He was not too optimist about living a long life but had never known that the people of Dodge were laying odds that he wouldn't even last a year.
We both knew that Doc had originally intended to go on to California, but didn't know the reason for his change of heart. Also we had never known why he traveled west to start with.
We laughed at his observations of Kitty arriving in town. The sly old man had decided then that Matt and I should be together.
We sat up half that night reading and reminiscing about old times. As I lay in bed, I thought about what this diary of Doc's meant to us. Maybe I should leave some stories of our past for our son.
