Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hold your peace

Matt was gone when Kitty woke the next morning. She had expected that. She knew that when he was troubled about something that he needed to walk, or ride, or fight, or, she smiled, sometimes just fucking was enough. She washed and dressed in a plain skirt and open collared shirt, leaving her hair down. Sam wasn't in the barroom yet, so she made coffee, and by the time it was done, she heard his key at the front door.

"Lock it behind you please, Sam," she called, and went out to meet him.

"We not opening up this morning, Miss Kitty?" he asked as he came across the room.

She shook her head. "No, Matt and Annie are going to have a conversation, and you and I are going to sit here real quiet while they do."

Sam's eyes were troubled. "I don't want her hurt, Kitty. I'd rather drop the whole thing now than see her hurt," he told her.

"Is it that way for you, too, Sam?" she asked. He nodded, meeting her eyes. "Well, do you trust Matt?"

"You know I do, Kitty." His ugly face twisted into even more of a grimace than usual. "But I'm not looking forward to it."

"I don't think any of us are, Sam," Kitty said, patting his arm. "Let's get some coffee."

They had the chairs down, and Kitty was sitting at a table near the stairs with coffee and cups in front of her, and a deck of cards in her hands when Matt came through the back door a few minutes later. Sam was in his usual station behind the bar. Kitty was handing Matt a cup of coffee when Annie appeared at the top of the stairs.

"We the only ones here, Annie?" Kitty asked her.

"No, ma'am. Cora and Lizzie are upstairs, but I asked them to stay in their rooms for a while." Annie replied. At the bottom of the stairs she turned to face Matt and Kitty. Matt put his cup down on the table, and Kitty picked up her cards and began dealing a hand of solitaire. Annie looked at them both, glanced once over to Sam, and then nodded.

"All right, Matthew. This is probably best. Where do you want me to start?"

"Start with Luff. How did he die, and when?" Matt asked.

"He died on Christmas day last year – nine months ago tomorrow. He was shot as he was opening the door of the Yellow Rose for business a little after noon."

Matt's face twisted. "Do you know who shot him, or why?" he asked.

"A useless, low-down drifter who was angry 'cause Pa cut off his whiskey the night before. He shot him through the heart without even callin' his name. Pa was wearin' a gun, he always was, but he didn't even have a chance to draw. Sherriff caught the man the same day. They tried him and hung him on New Year's day. I watched." The shy, little girl voice was gone, and the one that replaced it was hard.

Matt was ready to stop, but one glance at Kitty, black jack on the red queen, kept him going. "And your mother?"

"That part was true. She died four years ago of something wrong inside her. There was a lot of pain at the end, but she had grit, and she died well. We were all with her except Luke."

"So when did she tell you about me?" Matt asked.

"She didn't. Uncle Rafe did. He was very… protective about MayLou and me. He and Pa didn't get along well, although I never saw him fight with Mamma. I asked Mamma if it were true, and she told me the whole story. I was about sixteen then, so it's been a while that I've known."

Matt took a step towards her and tipped up her face, "Why did you come here, Annie?"

"I honestly didn't have anywhere else to go, Matthew, and I thought if I was going to work in a saloon, I'd as soon do it here as in Texas." she said. "Johnny and MayLou came back when Pa died…"

Matt interrupted her, "Where were they?"

"They've had a casino up in Virginia City for years, the Silver Penny. They left Amarillo when Louisa was eighteen," she stopped. "I don't know how to say this one, Matthew."

"Just say it out, honey." Matt told her.

"They're married. Have been since they first left."

Matt had to think about that one. "I suppose they weren't actually kin," he acknowledged and Kitty nodded, red trey on the black four. "How did your parents deal with that?"

Annie shrugged. "Pa went along with it. Helped them get set up. I thought it would kill Mamma, but she learned to live with it over the years."

"So they came back when Luff was killed?"

"Yes, sir." Her voice turned from hard to bitter. "They came back because they wanted money. I wanted to keep running the Yellow Rose. I'd been partners with Pa since the day I turned twenty-one. Louisa wanted it sold and Johnny sided with her. They wanted their share so they could sell up in Virginia City and open a place in Denver. Parlor house and a gambling place, but they needed more money. I didn't have enough to buy them out, even with Mark's share. So Mark and I accepted it, and Johnny handled the sale. We split it four ways, but Johnny and MayLou took most of it to invest in their new place. That's why there was no place for me to go."

"You didn't go back with them to Virginia City like you told us?"

Annie hung her head, "I didn't want to talk about that, so I made up something, Matthew."

Matt's voice was gentle, "What was it you didn't want to say, Annie?"

"About Louisa. She wanted me to come with them to the new house in Denver," Annie looked straight at Kitty now, her voice steel, "But she wanted me to whore, and I wasn't going to do that, Kitty, no matter how fancy a place it was. I told you that straight off when you asked me. Johnny said it wouldn't come to that, but between Johnny and Louisa, well, MayLou always got her way." Kitty returned her gaze steadily for a moment, and nodded her head, then lowered her eyes again, moving an ace to the top of the board.

"Tell me about leaving Amarillo, Annie," Matt said.

"I got Mark taken on with Mike Parker at the YB. He liked cowboyin' and Mike was a good friend to us all, 'specially to me. He knew what Mark needed – work and a peaceful place and someone to tell him what to do – and I left enough money to cover any expenses that were more than his pay. Uncle Rafe wanted Mark on his place, but I wouldn't have it. I know he's your brother, Matthew, and I don't mean to speak ill of him, but he'd raised his hand to all of us too many times when we were younger for me to trust him with Mark at seventeen."

"And then?" Matt prompted her.

"And then I packed what I needed, got on the stage, and headed for Dodge. Uncle Rafe and the aunts, they forbid me to do it." She hesitated a moment, "They spoke mighty ill of you, Matthew."

"They would," he agreed.

"But Mamma and Luff always spoke well of you. And MayLou, well, she'd been in love with you since she was a child, never really stopped talking about you – and that got her a right many bruises from Uncle Rafe."

Matt winced at that, but let her go on.

"Matt Dillon is a name that people know. A name people talk about even in Texas. I knew what you'd look like, but I needed to see if you were like Rafe, or if you were… were more like Pa. Mamma always said you were like Pa, and like Louisa's daddy, Travis. Pa didn't mind, after we were grown, if she talked about you. So I'd heard stories, but I didn't know. So I came to see."

Matt looked at Kitty for a clue, but she left him on his own, pulling in the cards to shuffle and deal again. He took a breath and let it out. "Annie, you don't have to stay at the Long Branch. You know Kitty and I are going to be married soon. You're welcome to come and live with us at Kincaid, make your home with us as long as you want."

He laid his hands on her arms, and she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "I will always thank you for that, Matthew, but that's not what I want. I want the Long Branch," she lowered her eyes and then raised them again, "with Sam."

Matt threw Sam a look, but found him looking at Kitty as she laid out her cards. No clues there. He couldn't really believe what he thought he heard, but that was a question he wasn't going to ask. Instead he tried, "So the money you have to invest here is really yours?"

"Yes, sir. I worked years at the Yellow Rose, and I got my cut as we went along, but all I got from the sale was the same share as the others. I know how to manage a saloon, and how to run the girls. How to keep things honest with cards, and keep things as safe as they can be. But you have to have a man to run a saloon, Matthew. If you think Kitty could have run this place without Sam all these years, you're fooling yourself. If she'd had more brain than heart she would have married him ten years ago."

Kitty didn't comment, red six on a black seven, but she met Matt's eyes just for a moment, gave him a wry smile and a shrug of her shoulders.

Matt put that away to think on later. "Then there's only one more thing we need to talk about, Annie," he said. "Tell me about Luke."

The room was quiet so long that he didn't think she would answer. Finally she said, "I've promised not to lie to you, Matthew. I give you my word right here I will never lie to any of the three of you again, but this is all I will say about Luke. You want to know more, then you go out to California and find him and ask him yourself. Luke is my younger brother. When he was fourteen, Uncle Rafe beat him half to death. After that, Pa and Mamma sent him out to San Francisco to stay with Mamma's sister. I have not seen him since. Pa and I, from the Yellow Rose, and Johnny and Louisa, from the Silver Penny, have paid his way through a good boarding school and then through Stanford University. He's almost through with medical school now, and he's working at a hospital in the city. Johnny and Louisa are still paying his expenses, and I've helped all I could. It's why we split the money from the Yellow Rose four ways – Luke already got his cut to pay for his education. That's all I'm going to say, Matthew, and all you need to know. If you don't like that, then, well, I guess I'll go." Tears streamed down her face, and she turned away from him. Kitty reached up her sleeve and produced a clean white handkerchief that she handed to Matt.

Matt turned Annie around and gently wiped her face. It made him remember wiping MayLou's tears away when she was just a little girl. "As long as you don't lie to me, honey, you can hold your peace where you need to. Are we done here? Sam?"

"Yes, sir. I never wanted this in the first place."

"Kitty?" he asked.

"Yes, Matt. I'm done." Kitty said, pulling in her unfinished game. "I'll accept the offer Sam and Annie made and get the paperwork started on Monday. I want that business finished before we marry."

But Annie put a hand up to touch Matt's face lightly, "I'm not quite through, Matthew. If Kitty hadn't forced this on us today, I still would have had to have this talk with you." She swallowed hard, and said, her voice breaking just a little, "I expect Rafe Dillon in town any day, Matthew, and I'm hoping you can arrange things so you don't have to kill him."