Son of a pimp and a harlot, Lee Jensen had never done an honest day's work. When at age twelve he left his pa's house of ill repute in Nebraska, neither Lee or his folks saw him as a runaway. He said goodbye and moved on, and that was that.
Lee embarked on a vocation of thievery, starting as a pickpocket and burglar and graduating to holdup man by age fifteen, robbing banks, trains and stages. The courts committed him to wayward boys' homes and sentenced him to jail and prison, and he escaped more often than not, plying his lawless trade as a fugitive.
When the Leavenworth sheriff sent Matt a report on Jensen with an account of his latest flight from the penitentiary, Lee was thirty-five years old. "He is afraid of a guard whom the prisoners claim beat and bullied him," the sheriff wrote. "The guard's name is Hackett, and he took a break from his job as turnkey to track Jensen down and capture him. He swapped his prison stripes for denim pants and a brown flannel shirt from the room where we store prisoners' clothing to wear on their release. Jensen also stole a black hat, jacket and rawhide gloves." The sheriff mailed a tintype with his report, and Chester took a long look at the likeness to keep Jensen's face to mind.
When Chester saw the man stagger into view through the marshal's office window, he wore the pants and shirt described in the sheriff's letter, but no hat, jacket or gloves to protect him from the winter cold. Another fellow rushed up and grabbed him, and he tore loose and ran on shaky legs into the street. The fellow seized hold of him again and the man yelled for help, struggling wildly.
Matt dropped the Dodge City Times on his desk and jumped up. "It's that escaped bandit Lee Jensen, Mr. Dillon." Chester handed the marshal his gun belt. "This feller got a grip on 'im an' he's hollerin'." Matt and Chester hurried outside.
The outlaw's breath failed him and he sagged in his captor's grasp. "Marshal. Please don't let him take me," he gasped. "He drug me to a shack on the prairie. Strung me up and horsewhipped me. My back's all bloody."
"I'm a guard at the State Penitentiary," the other man said. "He's an escaped prisoner. And I'm gonna haul him to that shack again and give 'im another whipping for running away from me just now. I'll break him of running if I have to whip his hide to shreds."
The man yanked at his captive, who looked pleadingly at Matt with pale-gray eyes distended in fright. "Please. I'll die if he flogs me again," the prisoner said in a near whisper, his voice trembling. "Look at my shirt." He wrenched his thin body round in the guard's hold, turning his back to Matt. His shirt was wet with blood.
"He's been beat terrible, Mr. Dillon," said Chester.
"That's nothing to what he's fixin' to get," said the guard. "Come on. You're making it worse on yourself every inch you fight me."
"Hold it. Your name Hackett, Mister?" Matt said to the guard.
"Yeah. So what?"
"You're Lee Jensen, aren't you," Matt said to the prisoner, who nodded.
"He's been brutalized and I'm taking custody of him, Hackett," said Matt. "Get your hands off him."
"I will not. I'm the one caught him. He's my prisoner."
"Not anymore he's not. I said let go of him."
Hackett shoved Jensen and he fell. "You want him, Marshal? Come get 'im."
"Help him inside, Chester," said Matt.
"Touch my prisoner and I'll kill you," Hackett said to Chester. "Step off that walk and I'll put a bullet in your belly."
"Draw your gun and you're dead, Hackett," said Matt. "Chester, go inside. Stay back from the door and windows." Chester went in the office and closed the door.
"Looks like I have to kill you, Marshal. Cause I'm not turning Jensen over." Hackett drew his gun. Matt snaked his Peacemaker from the holster and shot the guard through the heart. Hackett jerked up rigid and fell on his face in the dirt. Jensen sat up on the ground where Hackett had pushed him. Not many townspeople left shelter to brave the icy winter air unless they had to, so only a scattering of onlookers gathered round Jensen and Hackett's body, staring as Matt rolled Hackett on his back, saw he was dead and sent a man for the undertaker to bring his wagon.
Chester helped Jensen to a cell bunk and went for Doc. Matt stepped in the cell and looked at the prisoner, who sat on the bunk and met the marshal's gaze. A thin slightly built man on the shorter side of middling, Jensen had a pale, gaunt, fine-boned face, waving black hair, sharp features and very light, nearly colorless gray eyes. "Thanks, Marshal," he said.
"Sure."
"The hat and jacket 'n gloves I was wearing when Hackett caught me. He took 'em off. My shirt and undershirt too when he whipped me. He made me put the shirts back on after, but I don't want the other stuff. It's in the shack."
"Alright. You best take off your shirts before the blood dries, so it won't stick to the cuts," said Matt.
Jensen unbuttoned his shirt, tried to take it off and winced. Matt helped him ease out of the shirts. The ridges of his ribs stood out beneath his skin, and bloody wales covered his narrow back from shoulders to waist. Deeper cuts striped his sides, chest and stomach. Hackett had struck him so the whip wrapped his torso and jerked the whip loose after each lash.
"Hackett give me two other whippings when I was to the penitentiary," said Jensen, "but them other two times wasn't hard as this. He hit me so much I thought I'd die."
"Hackett can't hurt you anymore. He's dead," said Matt.
Jensen nodded, then bit his lower lip and squeezed his eyes shut, his body stiffening. "It burns. Each time he hit me with that whip, like being slashed with a scalding knife."
"Doc's coming. I'll give you some whiskey," said Matt. He poured half a cup and handed it to Jensen, who gulped it down and coughed at length, a rattling cough deep in his chest.
"I might die soon. Then I won't have to go back to prison," said Jensen.
"You were punished far worse than your crimes merit, Lee. If the decision was mine I'd set you free, but I don't have that authority," said Matt. "What I can do is write an appeal on your behalf to the State Supreme Court."
"Will they pardon me?"
"Maybe. It's worth a try. Chester's back with Doc," said Matt.
Doc had treated men for more severe floggings than Jensen suffered. Without the slightest shocked hesitation, Doc pulled out his stethoscope, listened to Jensen's heart and told him to take deep breaths as Doc placed the bell on either side of his chest.
Palpating the patient's sunken stomach, his sides under his ribs and his lower back, Doc glanced at Chester, whose face was blanched of its tan coloring as he stared with horrified pity at Jensen's lacerated torso. "Why don't you set out a spell, Chester," said Doc, taking a laudanum bottle and spoon from his bag. "Get some air."
"I need to see what you do for 'im, Doc, so's I can tend 'im proper. I'm a'right," said Chester.
"Well don't pass out or I'll leave you lie. This man needs care immediate," said Doc, spooning laudanum in Jensen's mouth.
"I won't, Doc. Ain't never fainted away seein' the wounded."
Doc gave Jensen three spoons of laudanum, which after the half-cup of whiskey dulled the fire of the whip cuts so they only stung like a jab from a knifepoint when he moved his arms in a way that stretched the skin. He sighed, his bony face smoothing out and his body relaxing under Doc's hands.
"Lee, I'm going to clean the cuts with carbolic acid. This will hurt some," said Doc.
Jensen sat calmly, not even flinching as Doc dabbed at the wales, and Matt confessed to giving the prisoner whiskey. "He was in a lot of pain, Doc. Is he too doped now?"
"Won't hurt him. It'll help his body rest," said Doc, applying a healing cream. "He should wear something like a big linen nightshirt the next three, four days. No undershirt."
"I got one, Doc," said Chester, perking up. "Saloon girl I was keepin' company with, she give me a nice soft one for Christmas. I ain't wore it at all." Doc put the nightshirt on Jensen, which fell to his toes and draped in folds around him like a sheet, the arms covering his hands.
"It's too big," said Matt.
"Just what he needs," said Doc. "The linen won't chafe his skin and irritate the cuts."
Jensen had a touch of pneumonia, and Doc prescribed soups and ginger tea sweetened with honey. He gave Chester a ginger root and bottles of tonic and laudanum for the patient. "I'll be back tomorrow about this time, see how you're doing, Lee." Doc gave the prisoner's hand a pat and left to pay sick calls. It was the season for colds and pneumonia, and Doc would make many visits to rooming houses and hotels, farms and ranches, as he did most winter days.
While Jensen recovered, Matt wrote an appeal of his prison sentence to Chief Justice Albert Horton of the Kansas Supreme Court, detailing the brutality Jensen endured at the hands of the guard Hackett. "Lee Jensen is broken in body and spirit, although a simplistic naturalness of temperament and meager education protect him from realizing the full effects of the ravages inflicted on him by an employee of the State," Matt reported. "I am convinced that in his frail condition, Mr. Jensen will die within a short span of time if he is returned to the penitentiary. I am requesting that he be remanded to my custody in perpetuity, to be released on my authority at my discretion. As a provision of his release, I will require him to earn an honest living and assist him to that end."
Matt folded in the pages of his letter the tintype of Jensen sent to the marshal by the Leavenworth sheriff. The picture had been taken at the penitentiary, and Lee's eyes looked big and sad in his thin face. For a bandit's face, it appeared curiously clean of artifice.
By law, Matt had to keep Jensen locked up while awaiting the State's decision. "Jail's a good place for him to rest a spell, get stronger," said Doc. "No work and no boss plaguing him, and Chester tends him just fine."
Jensen passed his time in the cell playing checkers and cards with Chester. The prisoner lacked the book-learning to read newspapers and magazines, but he enjoyed Chester's Wild West penny books and the drawings illustrating the stories. Lee haltingly read the tales aloud, usually tiring of sounding out the words before he finished the story. "Can you read me it to the end, Chester?" He'd hand the book over and lie on his bunk as Chester read and showed him the drawings.
Matt received a response to his appeal within the month, which granted clemency under the requested terms. "I like whittling carvings," said Lee, when Matt asked him what sort of work he liked and did well. "I'm slothful at any other work. That's why I stole money. The guard Hackett you killed to save me, Marshal. That's why he beat and whipped me in prison. On account of I done not one lick of work. Hackett reckoned I am defying him and he got riled, but I was just being bone idle."
"Disobeying orders to work are no reasons to torture a man," said Matt. "Escaping prison, either. I hate killing any man, but Hackett was vile. I'm not sorry he's dead."
"Me neither," said Chester.
"Nor me surely," said Jensen.
"Hackett's body is in the undertaker's icehouse until the spring thaw, so we'll put him behind us," said Matt. "You want to stay a free man, you have to hold a respectable job, Lee, or I'll jail you again. You can move on, go back to thieving, but I figure you're too weary of that life to return to it. You have no money, no horse and no gun. The prairie's frozen, the days cold and the nights colder. Water's too iced to fish and the rabbits are so deep in their holes you can't snare 'em. You have me and Chester and Doc looking out for you in town here. Leave Dodge now and you have no one. Just like before."
Lee sat still on the cell bunk, his pale-gray eyes stunned and distant and his fine features vacant. Matt laid a hand on his shoulder. "Alright, Lee?"
"I wanna stay in Dodge and whittle carvings," said Jensen.
"Whittlin' ain't no wage-earnin' job, Lee. A body whittles to pass the time," said Chester.
"Don't know what all else to do."
Chester gifted to Lee his old folding pocket knife in good condition, as Matt had given Chester a new knife with a silver filigreed handle for Christmas. "That thar's an' ole knife, but it's dandy for whittlin'," said Chester.
Though Jensen made no effort to find a job, the marshal wasn't minded to give up on him. Matt had killed for him, rescued him from a slow horrific death at the hands of the prison guard Hackett and worked long on the appeal that freed him, knowing the rigors of the State Penitentiary would end his life. Matt's heart drove him now and then to help a man whose nature did not deserve the deuces and sevens life dealt him even when the man, like Jensen, made fool choices. Matt had a strong sense of fairness. Life was often unfair and times he couldn't resist trying to balance the odds.
Moss Grimmick needed a cleanup man who could repair wagons and buggies, yet resisted hiring Jensen. "He's a thief, Matt. I need an honest man," said Moss.
"I don't think Lee will steal from you. He knows I'll throw him in jail if he does. If you give him a chance, Moss, and you find anything missing, I'll pay for it."
Moss reluctantly agreed, and along with a hat and gloves, Matt bought Jensen a jacket from Jonas's store to wear over the new plaid flannel shirt and undershirt the marshal had purchased to replace the shirts bloodied when Hackett forced Jensen to put them back on after flogging him. The jacket, gloves and hat Jensen took from prison when he fled had been left in the shack where Hackett whipped him. He didn't want them.
"Dunno why I have to dress like a cowboy," said Jensen. "I always wore a suit when I weren't locked up."
"You'll be mucking out stalls and sweeping up. That's not work for wearing a suit," Matt said with a bite to his voice.
The marshal regretted his irritation when Jensen took off his undershirt to wash himself at the basin. The wales on his torso had scabbed over, standing out against his pale skin, and his hearty appetite had done little to put flesh on his ribs.
"You gonna introduce me to Mr. Grimmick, Marshal?" said Jensen, soaping gingerly around the scabs. Matt could tell some of the cuts still pained him.
"Livery's easy to find. Edge of town east past the end of Front Street," said Matt.
"I can introduce him, Mr. Dillon," said Chester.
"Alright."
"Can I still bunk in the jail cell? I got no money for a room unless I earn a day's pay at the least," said Jensen.
"You can bunk in the jail long as you need to, but I expect you to work regular or I'll lock you in that cell. I mean it, Lee," said Matt.
"I don't wanna work at no livery," Jensen said as he walked to the stable with Chester.
"You wouldn't look for work so Mr. Dillon got you a job with Moss. You oughter be grateful," said Chester.
"I ain't grateful for a job I don't like."
"Now Lee, you best quit bellyachin' an' face up to yer duty. Mr. Dillon kilt a man to save you. He ain't done that so's you could return to your thievin' ways or leave Dodge jest to keep from gittin' throwed back in jail cuz you won't go to work an' end dyin' of cold 'n hunger," Chester scolded.
When Moss asked Jensen if he could fix wheels and harness, Lee said he reckoned he could right well, but he'd rather tend the horses.
"You do what Moss says. Don't give 'im no trouble," said Chester.
"I tend the horses," said Moss. "You'll do cleanup and repairs. You can start raking the stalls and laying down fresh straw."
Chester left to return to the office, and as Moss curried the horses, Jensen wandered the stable looking round. "If you're looking for the rake, it's in the corner near the pile of kindling," said Moss.
Jensen ambled to the woodpile. Moss had ordered a supply of bur oak from the lumber mill owner before the first freeze, and the kindling was seasoned. Green wood was better for whittling, but the dried oak would do for now. Jensen picked up a piece, sat in a chair by the stove and took the knife Chester gave him from his pocket. He didn't know what he would carve, if anything, but whittling was a fine way to pass the time.
Holding the currycomb, Moss moved to Jensen. "You don't want to work so you can leave," said Moss. "This job's not for you."
"Are you gonna hit me with that comb?" said Jensen.
"You can have that stick of kindling," Moss said. "Just go. Stop cutting shavings all over the floor."
"Alright, I'm going now. Are you gonna hit me with that comb?" Jensen repeated.
Moss's frown faded and he regarded Jensen with mixed curiosity and pity. Moss had heard about Jensen from Chester. "I won't hit you," said Moss. "You got nothing to be afraid of. You're bigger than me and a lot younger."
Jensen's face flushed. "I'll keep this piece of stove wood, then," he said, and rushed out of the stable. Moss followed Jensen outside and shook his head as the man hurried away.
Jensen walked back to the marshal's office and went inside holding the kindling stick. "Lee. What're you doin' back here already. Chester said Moss set you to work straightaway," said Matt.
"He did, Mr. Dillon," said Chester. "He tole Lee to rake the stalls an' put down fresh straw." Jensen stared at the marshal with the blank muddled expression that was starting to look familiar to Matt.
"Well, what happened, Lee," said Matt.
"Moss said that job weren't for me."
"Whittling on the job, were you?"
Jensen dropped the stick of wood. "Please don't beat me, Marshal."