Ma dressed and left soon after they woke, walking the few blocks home with the first grey light just beginning to touch the horizon. About half past five a group of cowboys carried an injured companion up the stairs to Doc's office. Half an hour later, the group left again, mounting their horses and heading down towards Ma Smalley's boarding house where they all stopped for an early breakfast and then rode on their way again. No one noticed the short, slender cowboy who remained behind. Ma unlocked the inner door to Matt Dillon's room, let her through, and then locked it up again. Kitty lay quietly on Matt's bed, taking in the smell of him, and listening to the various boarders rise, wash, eat, and make their way out to work. When things were quiet again, she stood to take a closer inventory of the room. She'd been there before, but not too often, and never alone.
The room was sizeable but sparsely furnished with just a bed, a chest, a washstand, and a small table Matt clearly used as a desk. She thought it might once have been a storeroom, next to the kitchen, because there were a small window and an outside door opening on the alley to the side of the house. The house door was under the back stairs, so she heard all the comings and goings into the kitchen, but figured if she were fairly quiet, no one would know she was there. Kitty sighed. It was still early in the day, and there was a long time to go before she could expect Matt to return. There were no newspapers, but a few books. She paged through David Copperfield and The Gilded Age, both of which she had read and not liked much. Matt's Bible was next on the shelf, but other than his name on the flyleaf, there were no family records. She picked up The Wreck of the Chancellor and soon found herself curled up on the bed, moving to catch the best light from the curtained window, and reading with little notion of either time or rattlesnakes.
Ma Smalley came in at midday with a tray of food and found her asleep over the open volume. She brought Kitty's own clothes, and after she had changed and eaten, prepared to take away both the tray and the cowboy outfit Kitty had worn that morning. "I know it's boring for you in here, Kitty, but it's just for today. I'm sure Matt will have some better ideas for tomorrow."
"I don't like hiding, Ma." Kitty replied. "It seems wrong. There's work to be done at the Long Branch – we're expecting the last herd of the season in tomorrow night." Kitty looked around her, "Just how secluded is this room?"
"I usually know when Matt has visitors," Ma replied looking at Kitty squarely, "But the room above is empty right now, so the only person likely to hear you, unless you scream, is me if I'm working in the kitchen."
Kitty nodded, accepting the rebuke. She hadn't spent the night here with Matt in several years. They both knew that Ma disliked it, although sometimes, during their first couple of years, the privacy and the chance for a whole night together had made them chance it. Matt had listened to Ma's lectures with reasonable grace, and she'd never actually tossed him out. "You going to let me stay here with him tonight, Ma?" she asked quietly.
"Kitty, you're not nineteen anymore. My boarding house has a good name, and I intend to keep it, but outside of that, what you and the marshal do is not my business and I have no intention of discussing it."
Kitty tilted her head and looked at Ma curiously, "You were worried about what Matt was doing to me, Ma?" she asked skeptically. "Not worried about saving him from my bad influence?"
Ma regarded her with calm eyes, "I know you thought you were all grown up, Kitty Russell, and I know you think you are now, but you were barely more than a child when you came to Dodge, and I expected more of Matt Dillon. I told him so several times."
"Ma! I'd been working the trade for more than five years when I came to Dodge! Matt, and Doc, and Chester – they were the first men in a long time who treated me like a decent human being and not just some saloon girl who didn't matter worth beans." She reached out a hand to lay on Ma's arm, and continued sincerely, "Ma, you have no idea what Matt did for me."
"Just because I'm old now, Kitty, doesn't mean I wasn't young once. I have a very good idea exactly what Matt Dillon did with you, and to you, and for you, but I thought then he should have married you instead, and I still think so." Ma told her bluntly.
"Matt will never marry as long as he wears that badge, Ma, and I won't ask him to give it up." Kitty said quietly. "I understand that. I've understood from the beginning."
"Humpf." Ma snorted, "I tell you to your face, Kitty, that I think Matt's been badly brought up. First Adam Kimbro and then Josh Stryker. Good men in their way, but wielding an undue influence on an otherwise sensible young lawman. Maybe Matt won't marry, Kitty, but you could." Ma told her.
Kitty shook her head slowly, "No, Ma. I have what I want. Maybe not all I want, but as much as I can expect to get. I'd rather run the Long Branch and have what I can of Matt's attention than marry someone else. I'm not all that thrilled with what I've seen of marriage, Ma."
"You think that now, Kitty, but you may not feel the same in another ten years, or another twenty. Can you see yourself standing there at the bar running the Long Branch when you're fifty?" Ma laughed suddenly, "I know, child, I know. You can't possibly even imagine being fifty. And that Marshal of yours is dead set on dying before he's forty." She picked up the tray and prepared to leave, "Let's just keep you safe through this afternoon and then see what Matt Dillon comes up with tonight."
"Ma Smalley!" Kitty gasped, her eyes sparkling.
Ma barked out a short laugh, "Well, Kitty, I didn't mean it that way, but I don't suppose but that's what will happen."
OoOoO
Doc drove his buggy out the road north of town about three in the afternoon, pulled up his horse, and settled back with a medical journal. It was after four when Matt came riding south on a tall sorrel gelding, dark with sweat, and, leading a big-barreled pinto on a rein behind him. Doc closed his journal and laid it on the seat as Matt pulled up beside him.
"Hello, Matt," Doc said taking a handful of telegrams out of his jacket and handing them up to him. "Thought you'd like to see these. Looks like you've had the wires humming all across Kansas."
"Kitty all right?" Matt asked, taking the papers from Doc's hand.
"Going about crazy with boredom," Doc replied, "Ma and I have her holed up in your room at the boarding house, and I'm pretty sure no one else knows she's there. Not sure I could have kept her there much longer, but you'll probably have some influence on that now that you're back. Couple things I need to tell you." Doc went on to explain about the funeral, about Johnny's absence, and about the snakes.
Matt's face remained impassive. "You're sure she wasn't bitten?" He couldn't help asking.
"Ma and I examined every inch of her, Matt. She's got hurt some from that wagon on Monday, and the bruises are beginning to color up, but she didn't get bit. You may find a few folks in town who don't agree with that, though – think she died of snakebite and I spirited away the body – but no one's had the gall to ask me directly, so I haven't had to comment."
"I'm going to need to get some sleep, Doc. I rode mostly straight through – just stopped long enough to rest the horses a couple of times. Fed them grain instead of letting them graze," Matt said. "How about you meet me at the Long Branch around midnight. I'm going to bring Kitty back there tonight, and we all need to talk a bit before tomorrow morning."
"I'll be there, Matt." Doc said picking up his reins, "I'll keep checking the telegraph office, as well. You just leave those horses out back at Ma's and I'll have Moss pick them up and get them taken care of."
"Thanks, Doc. I'll do that." Matt said.
OoOoO
Matt unlocked the outside door to his room and stepped inside. Kitty was sitting at the table playing solitaire in the dim light, and the first thing he saw was the gun in her hand pointing straight at him. She laid it down on the table and stood up. "I'm glad you're back, Matt," she said.
"You tired of trying to win with a deck that's missing the jack of diamonds?" he asked with a smile, taking the three long steps towards her.
Kitty grinned. "I noticed that right off, Matt, but it still helped to pass the time." She took the last short step and held out her hands. "I was just tired of you bein' gone."
He took her hands and pulled her into his arms. "You okay, Kitty?" he asked eventually, his face against her hair.
She drew back just enough to see his face. "I'm a little battered and a little scared, but I'm more bored than anything else." She laid a hand against his cheek, "You look exhausted, Matt. Come on over and sit down."
He dropped into the chair across from where she'd been sitting just as there was a knock on the house door. Before Matt could stop her, Kitty, gun in hand, was at the door. "Who is it?"
"Just leaving you some hot water," came Ma's voice, but Matt pushed Kitty behind him as he carefully opened the door, his own gun out, and checked the hallway before bringing in the can of water.
"You think you can stay awake long enough to wash some, cowboy?" Kitty asked.
"I'll manage that if you'll come into that bed with me, after I do," he said wearily.
"Matt! It's not even dark yet!" Kitty said.
Matt went and locked both doors. He shoved a chair under each doorknob. Then he went back and wrapped both arms around her waist, "Kitty, I haven't actually slept in about thirty hours. I want to pretend everything's fine, but we both know different."
Kitty met his eyes and nodded slow agreement. "How can I help, Matt?"
"I need to read that handful of telegrams, and then I need to get some sleep, and then we need to go meet Doc at the Long Branch sometime before midnight." He tipped up her chin and kissed her lips, brief but hard, "And I know I'm not going to sleep if I don't have you right there where I can have my hands on you and know you're safe, so will you do that for me, Kitty?"
Without comment Kitty stepped back and began taking off her clothes. She turned down the covers and moved to the far side of the bed next to the wall. Matt quickly opened and read the five telegrams, and then Kitty sat, watching, with her arms around her raised knees, as he stripped and, pouring water in the basin, stood naked by the washstand to clean away the dust and sweat of four days in the saddle. He was damp when he came into the bed, but he certainly smelled better. He hung his gunbelt on the bedpost where he could reach it, and pulled her into his arms.
Kitty had thought he would be far too tired to want her, but it didn't take long to realize she was wrong. He held her tight, tight against him, kissing her mouth open, and then moving his hands down to cup and squeeze her bottom and rub his rising cock against her. Almost before she was ready he had her on her back kneeing her legs apart and entering her hard. There was no finesse and no play, just an nearly desperate need. Kitty held him with equal fervor, clasping her arms around his neck, and laying wide open under him. After, he kept hold of her as he rolled onto his side – one arm holding her against him and the other hand firm around her wrist. "Don't leave me, Kitty." It was a command rather than a request.
She stroked his face with her free hand. His eyes were already closed. "I'll be right here when you wake up, Matt," she told him. He was asleep between one breath and the next, and she lay there in his grasp, watching the light fade from the window and thinking about the man next to her, and how he'd acted, and why. She was almost asleep herself when it came slipping into her mind, fitting solidly into place like a dovetail joining two pieces of wood.
All those years of telling her the badge came first, of keeping their relationship publicly casual, of telling her he couldn't put her in danger by letting people know, well, it might not be nonsense, but it sure wasn't the whole truth. Yes, he was afraid for her, but he was afraid for himself as well. This, this was the truth – this was his real fear – that if something happened to her, as it had, that he would act, not like a marshal upholding the law, but like a man who loved a woman. She wasn't sleepy, now, and she had a long time to think about it while she lay, spooned in front of her sleeping lover, his hands possessively on her even in sleep. Matt Dillon loved her. Whether he said it or not, whether he let himself act on it or forced himself to turn away, Matt Dillon loved her. She didn't know if he'd ever say the words, but his actions today had told her all she really needed to know. Matt Dillon loved her, and he wasn't going to like admitting that to himself.