The next morning was Sunday, and it was nearly noon before Kitty woke – a little groggy from the bromide that Doc had insisted she take the night before. Thinking about what the day would bring and what she would have to do, she briefly considered staying in bed, but the thought of Matt, with probably less than two hours sleep in him, riding hard out on the trail after Spike Marlow brought Kitty to her feet. The cold water in her wash bowl helped to clear her head, and knowing that coffee would help even more, she dressed quickly and headed down to the barroom.
Doc was waiting for her, and he and Bill Pence were drinking coffee. It was still too early on a Sunday for the bar to be open for business, but the side door was propped open spilling in the fresh September air. It occurred to Kitty that she would need to open up the windows in Ellen Sue's room and clean it. Get Ellie's things packed up to give someone. Who, she wondered? Maybe Johnny Lyon. He was as close to kin as Ellen Sue had in Dodge.
Her feet on the lowest stair, Kitty stopped still. What if she had been the one who had died? Who would take charge of things today? Who would want, or get, her few mementos, her clothes, her bits and pieces of jewelry? Would Doc or Matt take the time to sort through her letters, write to those few friends and relatives she still stayed in touch with? She glanced over at Bill with a little more than her usual placid contempt. She was damn sure that he'd use their partnership as an excuse to take over her half of the Long Branch.
Doc rose and came over towards her, "You all right, Kitty?" he asked, and she smiled at him as he led her over to the table and held a chair for her. "I'm fine, Doc. Just thinkin' on what needs to be done today, and those aren't very pleasant thoughts."
Kitty drank her coffee while Bill and Doc filled her in on the latest news. There had been a telegram from Matt to Doc saying that he'd arrived in Peters and found himself less than an hour behind Marlow. He expected to catch up with him that afternoon, or in Larnad that evening.
"Has anyone sent word to Johnny Lyon out at the Lazy J?" Kitty asked.
Bill looked at her in confusion, but Doc nodded. "I talked to Mike Justin as he as headed in to church this morning, and he said he'd pass on the news to Johnny when he gets back to the ranch this afternoon. I imagine we'll see him in here tonight."
"Who's Johnny Lyon?" Bill asked blankly.
Kitty regarded Bill impassively over the top of her cup. "He's the young man Ellen Sue was planning to marry, Bill. I'll need to pack up her room this morning and have her things ready for him. You know of any other kin she had, Doc?"
"No, no can't say as I do. Weren't her folks killed in that cholera outbreak in Cimmaron 'bout a year ago?"
"That's when Ellen Sue came to work for us. She was only about eighteen then," Kitty said, mostly for Bill's benefit. "She and Johnny go back a long way – kids together from what Ellie used to say. They were trying to get a stake together to start a homestead. Planning on getting married in the spring." Kitty put down her cup and looked sternly at her partner, "I'm going to figure out what Ellen Sue had on the Long Branch books and pay it out to Johnny, Bill."
Bill looked uncomfortable. "You really think that's necessary, Kitty?" he asked.
"I do," she replied, her eyes locked on his.
It was Bill who dropped his gaze, "Whatever you think best, Kitty." He stood up and retreated behind the bar.
Doc's sharp eyes took in that interchange. "How long you going to continue to put up with that man, Kitty?" he asked in a low voice.
"Not much longer, Doc," Kitty replied. "He's already asked if I'll buy him out. Wants to head back east with Laura. I've got enough saved to do that, but it would leave me mighty tight this winter if anything happened here at the Long Branch. My head says I should ask him to wait until spring, but…"
"But you'd sure like to be rid of him." Doc finished for her.
"I would," she said fervently. She put down her coffee cup and stood up. "I have to get up there and clean out Ellen Sue's room, Doc."
"Well, I'm headed back to my office. Just wanted to be sure you were all right, Kitty." Doc replied. "Oh, and I sent Ming Li over for the bedding early this morning."
"Doc, you are the kindest man I know." Kitty told him with a whoof of relief. "I know I should have stripped that bed last night, but I didn't, and I'm sure glad I don't have to deal with that this morning." Her pleasure melted, though, in her next thought, and her voice turned both sad and serious, "I suppose you have to take care of that all the time, Doc, don't you?"
Doc shrugged. Dying was part of doctoring. You got used to it. But he smiled and patted Kitty's arm as she gave him a quick hug. On the other side of the room, Bill's eyes took in the hug and then followed Kitty as she squared her shoulders and went upstairs. It never occurred to him to suggest helping her with the unpleasant task.
With the window and door both wide open, the stink of death began to dissipate as Kitty found Ellen Sue's carpet bag in the wardrobe and began packing up her clothes. There wasn't much. Two barroom dresses and three everyday ones, shoes, underthings, some cheap jewelry and hair ornaments, a brush and comb, a pile of loose change in the top dresser drawer. A box in the bottom of the wardrobe held the things Ellie had brought with her after her family died – a few pieces of china, what looked like a wedding veil, some papers and letters, a rag doll, and a family Bible.
Kitty took the Bible into her own room, sat down at her desk, and carefully wrote Ellen Sue's name and the date of her death into the front of the book. She looked at the other entries. Ellie had turned twenty the month before. Her parents' deaths, and that of her younger brother, were recorded eleven months earlier. Kitty blotted the entry and carried the book back to place with Ellie's things.
She looked around the room once more. Something was surely missing. Kitty carefully ran her hands behind the mirror and under the mattress. She finally found what she was looking for in an envelope wedged behind the frame of a picture hanging over the bed. Ninety-four dollars in bills, and a brief love note from Johnny Lyon asking her to meet him up in the hayloft at Moss' livery on a Sunday evening last July. Kitty smiled at that, and hoped the two of them had shared a special time together – her saving the note seemed to indicate that maybe they had. And that was it - a wooden box, a carpet bag of clothes, and an envelope with a little less than a hundred dollars – all that was left of a saloon girl named Ellen Sue Neely. Neither kith nor kin nor husband nor child. Kitty put the envelope in her pocket, left the other things on the bed, and headed back to her own room.
The first thing she did was sit down at her desk and clean her gun and reload it. It had been a gift from Matt their first Christmas together – and soon after her brutal rape at the hands of Mac Vicars. He'd taught her to shoot, and to always keep her gun clean and loaded. By the time she was done and the gun stored safely back in the drawer by her bed it was time to wash and dress for the late afternoon shift in the saloon.
Unlike her first years at the Long Branch, Sunday hours were limited these days, and it gave the saloon folk a half holiday that most of them enjoyed by sleeping in. Kitty usually washed her hair on Sunday mornings, but it was too late now. She changed out of the blouse and skirt she'd worn for the morning, tightened her corset strings, and reached for the green dress she'd worn Friday evening. But it wasn't there. Kitty distinctly remembered hanging the dress over the edge of her dressing screen before she went to bed early Friday evening. She moved to look around the edge of the screen and stopped dead in her tracks. Slowly backing away, she grabbed a robe and went down the hall to knock on Mariah's door.
"Can you go down the back way, Mariah, real quiet, and ask Doc to come up and see me?" she asked. "Tell him it's not an emergency, but I need to see him as soon as he can come over. Bring him up the back stairs, Mariah. And, please, don't talk to anyone about this." Mariah looked sharply at her, noticing her pallor, then nodded, and took off quietly to fetch the doctor.
Doc was spending his free Sunday afternoon reading medical journals, and one look at Mariah's face while she conveyed her message let him know something was amiss. With his usual calm assurance, he picked up his medical bag and ushered Mariah ahead of him out of his office door. The two of them went up the back stairs of the Long Branch to find Kitty waiting at the top. "You go on down will you, Mariah? Bill's opening up, and I think he's going to need you. Can you just tell him I'm not feeling too well, but I'll be down in a little bit?"
Mariah nodded. "I can do that with no problem, Miss Kitty. I'll get Gabby downstairs too. You want to tell me what's really wrong?"
Kitty shook her head. "Not now. Maybe later. I need to talk to Doc."
Mariah left and Kitty took Doc's hand and led him down the back way to her room. She closed and locked the door behind them and then pointed behind her dressing screen. "You take a look, Doc. I haven't touched a thing."
Expecting nothing less than a dead body, Doc peered behind the screen. On the floor was a green silk dress sewn with sequins. In the corner stood a pair of shiny black boots, a trim black Stetson, and a pair of worn brown saddlebags.