Matt had no wish to scold or feel so much as a prick of annoyance at Chester, as he'd be leaving Dodge in two or three months at harvest time. He hadn't cleaned the shotguns in quite a spell and agreed to start the task before lunchtime, but it was near two o'clock and Matt had not seen him since he went to say howdy to Moss. For Chester, saying howdy could stretch through morning and wile into the afternoon.
Matt was working through the stack of mail on his desk when Chester walked in with Dustin Keane. The right side of Chester's face was swollen and red, and he wore a blood-dotted bandage under his eye.
"Chester. What happened to ya?"
" 'Tain't so bad as it looks, Mr. Dillon. Doc sewed it jest five stitches." Chester limped to his bunk and lay on his back.
Matt moved to the bed and stood looking at him. "Who hit you?"
"Dun know 'is name. Councilman what partners roun' with another 'un name of Tom."
"I know those two bullies," said Matt. "They'll beat a man just for bumping into them. Our prominent citizens voted for 'em, so who am I to judge. How'd you tangle with them, Chester."
"It was my fault, Marshal," said Dustin. "Chester got pistol-whipped for saving me from another beating." He related what went on at Grimmick's livery.
"Keane, you riled those councilmen deliberately," said Matt. "You've provoked any man who gets your dander up since you killed Jack Bellamy. You can back down without goading to a fight, but you choose to be a troublemaker. No thanks to you Chester's not hurt worse. You're gonna have to leave town, Dustin. Tonight at the latest."
"But Mr. Dillon," Chester protested from his pillow.
"What is it, Chester."
" 'Tain't Dustin's fault I got hit. When me 'n the one feller was wrestlin' he called me an' idiot gimp, an' I got so mad I slammed 'is head in the horse droppings purposeful. Reckon that's why he whopped me with 'is gun."
"Chester, there'd been no fight to begin with if Dustin hadn't riled those councilmen."
"But they riled him. Thar's only so much a body kin take off folks, Mr. Dillon. Runnin' 'im outa town jest ain't fair."
Gazing into his partner's earnest soulful eyes, Matt felt his resolve to oust the gambler ebbing. Chester's knack for persuasion never failed to surprise the marshal. His friend could root out the heart of a thing and sway Matt like no one else could. Matt wondered how he'd fare when Chester wasn't around to nudge his conscience now and then.
The marshal sighed and regarded Dustin. The gambler took off his hat, his hair springing every which way. His fine neat features were tense and his brown eyes wide, as though awaiting judgment in court. Looking down at him, Matt was of a sudden struck by how young he looked. Not so long ago, a man of twenty-eight years wouldn't seem young as this one did. Expecting Matt to pronounce his fate, he made the marshal feel the weight of his own forty-one years.
Dustin's eyes grew moist and he swiped at them impatiently, clearing his throat. "Sorry," he said, a tremor in his voice. "No one ever much liked me, not even my own folks. Only my Annette, she loves me. Her love is so . . . ."
He swallowed hard and pressed a hand to his chest. "Annette's love lets me not care that the trash in this town have no use for me, but I must have their respect. The way they look at me like I'm dirt under their feet, or act like they're seeing nothing but air, just makes my blood boil.
"At the men anyway. Other women don't matter now that I have Annette, and I'm not the kind to speak rough to a woman and call her names or hit her, even if she treats me ill. But the men." Dustin's eyes watered again and he swiped at them some more. "You're not like them at all, Marshal. They are vile. I hoped you wouldn't come to hate me, too."
This turn in Dustin's talk alarmed Chester, who sat up on his bunk so fast, his head buzzed and thudded. "Forevermore, Dustin, Mr. Dillon don't hate you. He's a lawman. Makes 'is decisions with keepin' the peace ta mind."
"That's right, Dustin," said Matt. "I don't hate you."
"I won't be a troublemaker much longer, if you'll just let me stay in Dodge."
Matt grinned without meaning to. "Just how long do you aim to keep stirring up trouble?"
"I don't aim to. I am a target, Marshal. Once I can make 'em all afraid of me, they'll quit plaguing me and turning their backs on me to show me I might as well not exist. If I back down, things will just get worse for me, and for my lady, cuz when they hurt me, they hurt her."
Between Chester and the gambler, Matt knew he'd lost hold on the reins, though at what point they slipped out of his hands he couldn't figure. Used to taking charge, he was ill at ease with Dustin's take on the whole matter. "Dustin, you're not a big man by any stretch, and you don't look a tough sort. If Chester hadn't been at the livery to help ya out, those two councilmen might've beat you bad as Jack Bellamy did. You don't scare the men in this town, and you put yourself in danger provoking 'em."
"I know I'm taking risks but I have that right. I have the right to stand up to them and fight. Please don't make me run, Marshal."
Matt laid a hand on the young man's shoulder. "Alright, Dustin. I won't make you run."
K*************************************************************************
Kitty did not like the two councilmen who fought with Chester and Dustin at Grimmick's livery any more than she'd liked Jack Bellamy, and when she heard Nick Dickerson struck Chester with his gun and saw Chester's puffy bandaged face, she despised Dickerson and his friend Tom Hale, seething with anger at them both. Kitty was tempted to have them thrown out of the Long Branch. Except among certain prosperous townspeople, the councilmen were not well-liked as Bellamy was, and most cowboys despite the pervasive rancor toward Dustin would jump at the chance to shove Dickerson and Hale through the batwings and toss them on their hind ends. They were frequent customers, though, so Kitty kept her temper in check and let them talk.
At least Dustin wasn't in the barroom to start another fight. Poor Chester was in bed at the jailhouse, the side of his face around the gash grown puffier and bluish black, his eye almost swollen shut. Doc gave him morphine for the wound, dizziness and a pounding headache, and Dustin—who felt responsible for his injury—tended Chester and kept him company while Matt investigated the deaths of two blacksmiths who'd shot each other competing for business in the town of Spearville. Not many folks lived there, farmed or raised cattle on the surrounding plains, and even fewer passed through the settlement. There was room for just one blacksmith in Spearville.
"Dustin Keane just don't get that nobody wants his stinking, murdering hide in Dodge," Tom Hale was saying. Dustin had head-butted Hale at Moss's stable and busted his nose, and Doc had pieced it together and fixed a splint to hold it in place. The broken nose made Tom's voice sound stuffed, like he had a bad head cold.
"You're the stinker, Tom Hale," said Annette, who stood near Kitty at the end of the bar. "Why don't you get drunk and wander out on the train tracks. Get yourself run over."
A roar of laughter rose in the saloon, and Hale glowered at Annette. "Why don't you get your tail upstairs and slip out of your trollop's dress, honey. I'll be up in a spell. I won't be gentle, but I reckon a woman like you likes that sorta lovin'."
"I don't go upstairs with men anymore," said Annette, "and I'd soon make love to a pig as you."
"I'll fix that tongue of yours," Hale threatened.
Kitty brandished an empty whiskey bottle. "Touch her and I'll let you have it."
"Well devil take you both," said Hale. "Crazy scarlet women. As I was saying. Keane is a gambler, and since that little beauty with the rattler's tongue is his girl, the Long Branch is his waterin' hole. So why not stop up his well?"
"What're you babbling about, Hale?" said Sam. Dustin had treated Chester to a beer after Doc patched him up, and Sam had seen on Chester's face Councilman Hale's handiwork with a gun. Wont to show Hale deference and address him with the honorific on account of his position, now Sam purposefully did neither, speaking the same way he would to a rowdy cow hand.
"How dare you talk to me like that, barkeep," said Tom. "I mean everyone refuse to play cards with Dustin Keane. If he goes to another saloon, follow him and tell the fellas there our plan to get shet of his noxious presence. Keane's too lazy to do real work if he had the smarts for it, which he doesn't. The little cur will have no choice but to slink out of Dodge with his tail between his legs."
"You're a sickening excuse for a man, Hale," said Annette. "You can't compare to Dustin any way at all."
"If you wanted a real man, honey, you'd let me show you a wild time," said Hale. "Your feeble little gambler scarce got the spirit to unbutton his fancy new charity pants."
"How about it then, boys?" said Hale's friend Councilman Dickerson, whom Dustin had throttled and dunked in Grimmick's horse trough. "One free beer for every man who makes dumb Dustin an outcast so he'll cast his worthless self out!"
"Dustin should've drowned you, Dickerson," said Annette.
"Why he ain't drowned himself by now, I dunno," Dickerson sang out. "Cuz no one wants that nobody around, right, boys?" The men shouted assent and rushed the bar.
"Oh Kitty," said Annette, "my poor Dustin lost the fight. That odious Tom Hale is right about one thing. Dustin's not fit for any work but gambling."
As the men drummed the bar with their fists and heckled the bartender, Sam urgently beckoned to Kitty. She gave Annette's hand a comforting squeeze. "Don't despair yet. I think Sam has an idea. He hasn't started slopping these animals their free beer, and I can't remember last I saw 'im that excited."
Kitty moved behind the bar to Sam. "Miss Kitty, this will cost us big, but if it works, Dustin can keep playing cards here."
"Well, I don't know that I wanna put out much as a dollar for Dustin, 'specially since Chester got pistol-whipped cause of him. But whatever your idea is, Sam, I'll do it for Annette."
"Come on!" Dickerson yelled. "Get that beer flowin', barkeep!" As Sam and Kitty talked and gestured to each other, her patrons, pumped to a frenzy by the promise of a free beer and the giddy anticipation of sending Dustin Keane to Coventry, shouted and shook their fists.
"You want beer shut up all of you!" Kitty hollered. The men quietened and curiously watched Miss Kitty. They'd never heard her scream at the house. "Every man who agrees to play cards with Dustin and not snub him gets all the free beer and whiskey he can drink 'til closing time."
The men hesitated, their ferocious hunger to shun Dustin vying with their unquenchable craving for liquor. "But Miss Kitty, Keane killed Jack," one objected.
"Yeah," another chimed in. "Jack was a favorite here."
"Jack's dead 'n buried an' he ain't comin' back to life irregardless," a cowboy declared. "I ain't missin' out on a whole day 'n night of free beer an' whiskey on account of him."
"Me neither," said his fellow ranch hand.
"The offer includes our very best whiskey," Kitty said. "The finest rye at twenty-five cents a shot for free. Or our twelve-cent corn liquor if you like the plain stuff."
That was too much for the men to resist, and they called out agreement as one to Kitty's deal. "To Dustin Keane!" Sam bellowed, lifting an overflowing mug over his head before he thumped it on the bar. Sam so rarely raised his voice, the sound made Kitty startle.
"Hear hear!" the cry went up. "Dustin Keane! To Dustin!" Annette squealed happily and giggled, clapping her hands. The two councilmen trudged out of the Long Branch with an air of defeat. The uproar sent a hot pulse like the hammering of a mallet in Tom Hale's broken nose, and he clung to it in its splint as though it would drop off.
M************************************************************************
Dustin started showing at the Long Branch by noon most days, where he stayed until about one o'clock in the morning, an hour or so before the barroom closed. Though the men and gals in the saloon weren't especially neighborly to the gambler, they stopped treating him like a pariah, and he took refuge in the Long Branch to escape the hostility hounding him wherever he went in Dodge, and the haughtily raised chins, eyes gone blank and averted and backs turned when the townspeople saw him, the frozen silence that filled every store and restaurant in which he set his boots.
They made Dustin cold to his bones in the heat of summer—their eyes either looking through him like he wasn't there, or glaring daggers like they wanted to kill him. They said so, repeating the same words, "I'd like to kill you like you killed Jack Bellamy."
They couldn't possibly all have known Bellamy, or cared much more than a whit for him if they did, or missed him overmuch, or mourned his death more than a long moment. Bellamy had simply become a name to them, an excuse, like they had the honor of attending an important sociable with Jack as the dead host, his barely glanced-at portrait hanging on the wall, or joining an esteemed circle with targeting Dustin Keane as its sole purpose.
Formerly a quiet body, to whom no one except his girl Annette paid much attention—other than to accuse when they thought him too lucky at cards—Dustin for the first time in his twenty-eight years was the object of bloodlust for its own sake, and his own blood burned to punish those men who preyed on him, to rend them like a wild animal with fangs and claws. They were that breed thrilled by watching hangings, and their women, too—more like ravenous creatures than women, their mouths wet and faces fiercely twisted as they screeched curses at the condemned. These women on the streets of Dodge made Dustin shudder, made him sick to his stomach. The men at least did not scream and contort their faces like these shrews. They embodied what was most revolting in woman—that tendency to spew their feelings with no regard for others.
The men had never quit playing cards with Dustin, even right after he recovered from the beating Bellamy gave him, after he shot Jack dead. Enemies commonly played cards, in any town and barroom where Dustin set his boots. Law-abiding men played with bandits and gunmen for hire for the chance of winning a dollar.
Now though, gambling at the Long Branch was better than ever, and Dustin always sat to a full table. His girl was still a hostess but thankfully no longer a woman of the night, and aside from their cramped boarding house room, the saloon was the only place Dustin felt at ease, the only place in Dodge not riddled with enmity toward him. He grew keener at his work, smoother and more adept with the cards, a craftier player whose rather small fingers shuffled and dealt nimbly. At the top of his game, he was winning.
On yet another muggy summer night following one in a succession of blistering days, Matt, Chester, Doc and Kitty sat at a table in the Long Branch. Excepting winter, they had more leisure to chat together in summer than any other time of year, and with Chester's leave-taking looming closer, they spent long hours together. The men drank beer while Kitty sipped cold honeyed tea.
"How's that wound mending, Chester," said Kitty. "Any better?" His cheek and eye around the bandaged cut were still slightly swollen, the bruise purplish and looking too fresh, and he looked a bit haggard. Kitty worried, though she knew Doc was taking good care of the wound, of course. Seemed she and Matt and Doc were always worrying just a little about Chester, even when there wasn't much cause for concern. Kitty had resolved not to fret over him when he left Dodge, not even the day he left. Chester was hapless and anything could happen, and if she let herself wonder how he fared on his own, she'd be a wreck.
"My face is still some tender," he said. "I don't need the morphine packets no more though, jest laudanum. Ain't nowheres near bad as 'twas, Miss Kitty."
"That beast of a councilman bruised the bones when he hit you with his gun barrel," said Doc. "I'm not sure but he might've cracked the cheekbone a little. It'll take awhile to heal. Lot of rest, no distress, makes it mend faster."
"Well, he's gettin' plenty of rest with the jail cells empty," said Matt. "The office is peaceful and quiet as a churchyard." He patted Chester's arm.
"Yeah, a body cain't help but take 'is rest in thar. Knocks me out dead asleep hours with the sun shinin' full up."
"That brute Dickerson has his nerve, calling himself a councilman," said Kitty. "Matt, why didn't you throw him in jail, anyhow?"
"I figured he already got what was comin' to 'im, Kitty. Chester crowned him with horse dung, and Dustin near drowned and choked him to death."
"Well he deserved it," said Kitty.
"I riled Dickerson too much howsoever, soilin' 'im with muck like I done," Chester said, fingering his sore face around the bandage. "I oughter knowed better." His friends made no reply to that, as they saw the truth of it.
"Ain't nobody that durn lucky," a man growled from Dustin's table. As Annette leaned over the back of his chair, her arms wrapped round his shoulders, Dustin looked archly at each of the five scowling players crowded at the table, then slid a pile of bills in front of him and neatly stacked them.
"Can't trust a killer like him," said another player. "Gotta keep a close eye on 'im."
"You think I play a crooked hand, get out of the game," Dustin said in his mild way. "None of you have to play, I'm not holding my gun to your heads."
"Young smart mouth," a third player said. "Busted lip will shut you up."
Dustin felt the familiar anger ignite in his gut, but he didn't let it show. He was winning big and wanted to bleed the men dry if he could. "I'll shut up," he said. "I wanna play cards, not fight." The players still looked mad, but no one tossed their hand.
"Dustin's playing high stakes tonight," said Doc.
"He'll take 'em for all they got," Matt said. "There's gonna be trouble."
"Trouble's Dustin's middle name," said Kitty. "Not that it's his fault. Anyone staying a day knows Dodge is a rough place, but I didn't know so many people here could get vicious. They've been giving him a hard time since he had to shoot Bellamy, and they won't let up."
"Ben Ellis is watching Dustin's table close, at least," said Matt. "Ben's strong with his fists, and he's fast on his feet for a big man. I can count on him to help out if those boys gang up on Dustin and start swingin'." They looked at Ben, who sat by himself at a corner table, his honest eyes sober in his wide face with its calm, steady expression. He'd sipped from the same mug all night, and it was still half full. He had a sure dependable air which invited looks from women and men alike.
"Iffen Ben goes home an' them fellers start poundin' on Dustin, ah'll help you fight 'em, Mr. Dillon," said Chester.
"You'll do no such a thing. You're in no shape to be brawlin', and you're no match for three of those five men at your best," Doc scolded.
"Doc's right, Chester," said Kitty. "Matt, you can't let him fight."
"I'm not letting him fight," said Matt. "Stay out of it, Chester."
"But Mr. Dillon, you cain't beat five men to oncet, an' Dustin he's got no chance against 'em if I don't."
"I think Ben will stay long as Dustin's here. If he doesn't, I'll manage. Stay out of it no matter what, Chester." Matt gave him the eye.
"Yessir." Chester slumped in his chair, picked up his beer mug and thumped it on the table.
"If there's gonna be a brawl, you shouldn't be here, come to that. It'll unsettle you, and you're looking too tired as it is. Go to the office and go to bed, Chester," Doc ordered.
"I will not. I ain't no sickly invalid, Doc."
"You're a convalescent."
"Yer makin' a big fuss over nothin'. A l'il wound scarce more'n a scratch."
"Matt, will you talk some sense into him?" Doc huffed.
"Chester, if Doc says you should go to bed—"
"I won't be the only one missin' out on what happens."
Matt shrugged. "I tried, Doc."
"Maybe nothing will happen," Kitty said hopefully. "The whole thing with Dustin is wearing on Annette. She'll take it hard if he gets hurt again."
"Will you take it hard if I get hurt?" said Matt.
"Oh Matt, you're always getting hurt. If I let it bother me, I'd waste away to nothing."
Dustin's game dragged on. To everyone in the barroom, it was his game. The other five players grumbled and hurled insults at him as he emptied their pockets. Doc said goodnight a few minutes past ten o'clock, heading for his rooms and to bed. Dustin quit the game at one o'clock, buttoning nine-hundred-twenty-two dollars in bills in a sizable pouch Annette had paid a tailor to sew inside his new linen vest. With an arm around his girl he moved to the batwings, and Matt followed. Ben left his table and trailed after them.
"Miss Kitty." Chester stood and tipped his hat.
"Chester, wait." Something was going to happen, and Kitty would not be lounging inside when it did. She felt it stirring in the warm moist night, pulsing with her heartbeat. "I need some air," she said, and Chester gave her a look. He knew what Kitty was about. He could be perceptive. "I'm gonna make sure you don't fight," she said lightly, although she meant it. More often than not, Kitty held sway over Chester when she needed to, yet she wasn't sure how since he could be mulish at times.
"Keane." The burliest of the five players Dustin trounced at cards slammed through the batwings onto the boardwalk. "You got more than nine hundred of our money." The four other men hemmed round the hefty fellow.
"The money's mine. I won it fair."
"The devil it is. You're a cheater, Keane. And a murderer to boot."
"I am not. The money belongs to me now." Dustin spoke without a quiver. Marshal Dillon and Ben Ellis were a fortress at his either side.
"Dillon and Ellis can't protect you," said the burly card player. "It's five of us against three of you, and you don't pack much of a punch from the looks of you, Keane." The five men moved in on Dustin. "We're takin' that money back."