Chapter Sixteen: The Long Branch

The Long Branch emptied at the first sign of the gunfight on Front Street. Sam stood at the batwing doors, looking out, but turned when he heard the door to the office open behind him.

"Kitty, go back in the office and lock the door." Sam told her urgently, turning and walking towards her. But as he did a man in buckskins slid through the side door from the alley and pointed a rifle at him.

"Just walk on over to the bar, mister," the man said, "You too, lady." Sam obeyed, moving towards the bar. Kitty stayed where she was. "Get goin', woman, or I will surely shoot him." Kitty stepped slowly towards where her husband stood. The man moved into the center of the room and addressed Kitty, "Now while everybody's busy outside, lady, you and me are going to head out that back door. We can do it easy like, or I can shoot your barman here and then we can go."

"She's my wife, mister," Sam said, "And you're not takin' her anywhere." He took Kitty's arms and swung himself in front of her, turning his back to the man with the rifle.

"Well, they sure didn't tell me she was married or that she was about to have a damned baby, but I guess neither of those things matters much. I can shoot you, mister, back or front, and 'tain't difficult to get rid of a child once it comes." There were a series of shots from the street, and the gunman in the Long Branch raised his rifle and tightened his finger on the trigger.

"No!" Kitty yelled, grabbing at Sam and trying to pull him out from in front of her.

A single shot from the rifle echoed through the barroom, and Sam fell, dragging Kitty with him. From the balcony above, five measured shots, one after another, hit the leather-clad man standing below. He looked up as the first shot hit, and tried to raise his rifle, but dropped it as more bullets hit him, forcing him back and to the floor.

Doc Adams wasn't the first man through the door, but he was the first to do anything useful. He knelt next to Sam on the barroom floor and ripped at the big man's shirt and vest where a red stain was spreading quickly. Frank Reardon and Newly O'Brien, the marshal's arm slung around his deputy's shoulder, entered through the batwing doors. "What happened here?" Frank said in his lawman's voice, "Anyone see?"

"Sam's been shot, Frank," Doc replied. "I don't know how bad it is. I need to get him up to my office."

Frank gestured to some of the men who stood gawking, and it took six of them to lift Sam and carry him out the door. Doc followed, and Kitty, struggling up from the floor, tried to, but Frank stopped her. "Not right yet, Kitty. You stay just a minute, just one minute, and tell me what happened here."

Kitty turned to where Newly was settling Frank into a chair. "Frank, I have to go up to Sam!"

"I know you do, Kitty, but just let me know what happened." Frank said, his bleeding right leg stretched out in front of him.

Kitty took a breath. "I was in the office and I heard the ruckus start. I came out and everyone in the saloon except Sam was outside on the boardwalk. Sam told me to go back in the office and lock the door, but before I could do it, that man," she indicated the body on the blood-soaked floor, "Came in the alley door and said I had to go with him. Sam stepped in front of me, and I tried to move him, but the man fired his rifle and Sam fell."

"Then who shot this fella?" Frank asked.

"I don't know." Kitty replied, looking around the room. "There was nobody else here."

In the quiet that settled on the room after her statement, Newly heard a soft sob and looked up to the balcony outside the curtained archway to Kitty's rooms. Estelle sat there, on the floor behind the railing, a six gun in her hands. Newly started quickly up the stairs, but slowed as he reached the balcony and walked carefully towards the girl, kneeling beside her. "Was it you, honey?" he asked gently, taking the gun from her.

"Yes, sir," she said in a tiny voice. "I got the gun from Miss Kitty's drawer, and when he shot Sam, I did…" she looked up at Newly, "I did just like you taught me, Newly, I held it in both hands, and I braced it on my knees, and I kept shootin' until I was sure he was dead. But I left one bullet, Newly, like you always told me. I left one bullet in the gun just in case." Newly pulled the girl against his shoulder and let her cry. He'd been teaching her to shoot coyotes, not men, but she'd surely learned her lesson well. He lifted her and carried her downstairs, sitting her down next to Frank with her back to the body on the floor.

"Some of you men get that out of here," he said sharply, gesturing to the dead man, and four men stepped forward to do so.

Kitty was standing with her arm around the child, stroking Estelle's hair, when a sudden, intense look of surprise transformed her face, and her skirt and the floor beneath her were both suddenly soaking wet. Estelle sat up straight. "It's the baby, Miss Kitty," she said, "That's how Mamma's babies always started."

"Newly?" Kitty said, gazing at him.

But Newly was already asking one of Kitty's girls to go for Ma Smalley. He turned to the other girls, standing together just inside the door. "You ladies get Miss Kitty upstairs and into bed. Ma will be with her pretty quick."

"I have to go to Sam, Newly." Kitty stated with determination.

"Not now you don't, Kitty," he said firmly, "You've delivered enough babies to know what's happening here. You let the girls take you up and get you settled. Ma's coming, and I'll be up when I get Frank taken care of. And we'll let you know about Sam as soon as we know anything at all."

"It's too early, Newly! The baby's not even due yet!" Kitty insisted, as Cora and Helen each took one of her arms and started walking her towards the stairs.

"Well, it may be too early, Kitty, but that baby's sure coming now," Newly told her. "Don't you worry, we'll take care of you and Sam both."

OoOoO

It was a long night. Doc did his best with Sam, removing the bullet, stopping the bleeding, and sewing up the wound. Sam took his time about regaining consciousness, and, when he did, Doc let him stay awake barely long enough to reassure him that Kitty was safe before sending him back into a drugged sleep. Mollie Parks came up to Doc's office to sit with him, while Doc hurried over to help Ma Smalley with Kitty, and Newly with Frank.

Frank's wound was shallow but long, and Doc insisted on stitching it before bedding Frank down in Sam's old room at the Long Branch. He wouldn't take any of Doc's compounds, but he did agree to a stiff drink of whiskey, and Doc left Estelle to sit with him, saying that neither of them should be alone right then.

Doc would have called it an easy labor, if he hadn't been too smart to know better than to ever say a thing like that to a woman in childbed. He assured Kitty that Sam was well and resting, and that things were moving along with the baby as smoothly as Ma had told her. Then, just before midnight on that cold December night, Doc delivered Kitty of a small, slightly-early baby girl. Ma washed the baby in warm water and wrapped her in a flannel blanket while Doc and Kitty dealt with the afterbirth. Then Doc held the baby, looking into her deep blue eyes and stroking her few strands of light, reddish hair while Ma cleaned Kitty up, changed her sheets, and got her into a fresh gown. When she was sitting, exhausted but happy, back against the pillows at the head of the bed, Doc handed her the daughter that was all she had left of Matt Dillon.

"I wish…" Kitty said, looking up at Doc, and he heard what she wasn't saying as clearly as if she'd let herself do it aloud.

"I do too, honey, I do too. He'd be mighty proud." Doc leaned over to kiss her forehead. He sat beside the two of them on the side of the bed, taking a few minutes to get his emotions back under wraps. "You want some time alone here, Kitty, or you want to let the others come on in?" he finally said.

She looked up at him in a little surprise. "Newly, and Frank, and Estelle are just down the hall. They've been waiting pretty patiently," Doc told her.

Kitty's eyes seemed to glow as she told him, "Well, you just bring them on in, Doc. Guess we're all family here." Then she added, somewhat embarrassed that she hadn't even thought to ask before, "Frank all right, Doc?"

"He is," Doc said. "He got a bullet crease across the side of his right thigh, but I've seen him with a lot worse, and you have too. He'll need a new pair of britches, right enough, but the leg will heal up fine."

"You take a few minutes coming back, Galen," Ma told him as he left the room, "And I'll get Kitty ready for her visitors." She brushed Kitty's hair and plaited it into a long braid over her shoulder, then brought her a warm washcloth for her face and hands.

Estelle was the first into the room, followed more slowly by Newly helping Frank. Estelle was sitting on the bed and lost in wonder at blue eyes, pale skin, and tiny hands, while Doc moved Matt's big chair over next to the bed for Frank. Newly settled him in the chair and then leaned in to kiss Kitty and take a long look at the baby. "She's as beautiful as you are, Kitty," he told her.

Frank, his eyes sad, just looked at mother and child and tried to smile. His longing for Maria and his own child, the thought of the daughter Matt would never see, along with all the whiskey Newly had poured into him, left him more downhearted than he knew how to handle. "Here, Doc," Kitty said, handing the baby up to him, "You give Frank his goddaughter to hold." Doc placed the baby in Frank's arms and Kitty told him, "Sam and I decided if it was a girl, we'd name her after Maria."

OoOoO

Doc had instructed Kitty, very firmly, that she needed to wait a week before taking the baby outside and up for Sam to see. He'd assumed she understood that meant that she needed to wait a week as well, but the second morning after Maria's birth, Kitty was walking up the stairs to Doc's office on Clem's arm while Estelle proudly minded the sleeping baby. Sam was asleep in the back room, and though he woke when Kitty took his hand and sat next to him, he was pretty groggy throughout her brief visit.

"Doc," Kitty said, as he walked her back to the Long Branch leaving Clem with Sam long enough for Doc to check on the baby, "Doc, is Sam hurt worse than you told me?"

Doc sat her down in the deserted barroom and took her hand. "No, honey, he's not. But look here, Kitty, you need to understand a few things. Sam's a lot older than Matt was, and you know Matt had the constitution of an ox. Never knew a man who recovered as quickly as he did. You can't be expecting Sam to get over this the way Matt would have. It's going to take him time, 'til the end of the week at least, before we can even move him back here to the Long Branch, and then another week or two in bed. He's going to have to take things easy and let that wound heal, young lady, and it's going to be your job to see that he does. Do you understand me?"

Kitty nodded. "I do understand, Doc. I'm just, well, not used to it."

"Well, God willing, you won't ever have to get used to it, and nothing like this will happen again," Doc said.

Kitty's face was somber, "It shouldn't have happened even once, Doc. It was me they wanted, and it was part of Tonneman's vendetta against Matt. Sam shouldn't have had to be involved in that. I tried to push him, to get him out of the way, but he was too big."

"Well, you pushing him just as that shot was fired likely saved his life. But you listen here to me, Kitty Noonan," Doc told her solemnly, "Any one of us would have done what Sam did, but he was the one who was here, and he had the right, honey. He's your husband, and protecting you is one of the things that gives him the right to do. Don't you go cutting him down by talkin' to him, or about him, like that. He's going to be fine. It's just going to take a bit more time than you're used to, and you need to be set to deal with that."

"I'll try, Doc." Kitty said.

"You'll do more than try, missie." Doc warned her, "I won't have my fine surgical work brought into dispute by that husband of yours taking a melancholy and wasting away!"

Kitty smiled and started up the stairs. "Come see Maria, Doc. And you let me work things out between Ma and Mollie and I so that somebody's with Sam while he's recovering. I suppose Estelle can take a turn as well, she's a responsible little thing and she loves Sam dearly."

OoOoO

Doc had wanted Kitty in bed for a week, but she ignored him. Other than being sore in places she couldn't mention in public, and, of course, the awkwardness of bleeding for the first time in many months, she felt better than she had since midsummer. She spent time with Sam each day, but otherwise kept mainly to her room that first week and let Clem and the girls handle the saloon. She took Maria up to visit Sam when she was six days old, and Sam, sitting up in bed, was thrilled with the tiny bundle. Doc gave them some private time together, but wouldn't let Kitty and the baby stay too long.

Back upstairs at the Long Branch Kitty nursed her daughter and put her down in the cradle Frank had made. Searching through her wardrobe she found a long red skirt and lace shirtwaist. Putting on a corset for the first time in months was more difficult than she thought it would be, but, with the weight she'd lost during those difficult days, she managed to get herself dressed in her working clothes. Leaving Estelle with Maria, she headed downstairs to take charge.

It wasn't as easy as she'd hoped, and Kitty found herself working for only an hour or two at a time, and then going back upstairs to the baby for the same amount of time. It wouldn't have worked at all without Estelle, but Kitty made herself a firm commitment that she would have the child back in school after Christmas. Still, with Estelle there, and with help from her girls, Kitty was back running the Long Branch before Doc even let Sam return home.