Chapter Seven: Troubled Hearts

Ma was knocking on the door about eleven, and they joined her in the kitchen a little later to eat a late meal before walking over to the Long Branch. Kitty was quieter than usual, and Matt kept a hand on her arm as they walked down Front Street. No one shot at them the whole way.

Matt took a long look over the doors before opening one and ushering Kitty in. Things were quiet, although Kitty's entrance livened things up a bit. She was hugged, welcomed, jawed at, celebrated, and finally allowed to sit down at a back table with Matt and Bill while Stella brought them a bottle and glasses.

"You get rid of all the snakes, Bill?" Kitty asked.

"Searched every crevice and corner in the place, Kitty. There were just the four and all in the office." Bill replied, seeming genuinely upset, "Where've you been, Kitty? Once it was clear you weren't at Doc's anymore, I got mighty worried."

Kitty looked at him. "How worried?"

"I broke the lock and searched your room, Kitty," he said, "Now don't you go fuming at me! I had to know if you were in there, maybe hurt or something."

Kitty relented, "Thanks, Bill. I didn't mean to worry you. You get the door fixed?"

Bill handed her a key, "And I'm keeping one, Kitty," he told her bluntly, "I had them put a latch on the inside that you can use if you feel the need, but I'm not going to have to break another lock in my own saloon."

Kitty didn't rise to the bait. An inside latch would do for now. She turned to the Marshal, "Well, Matt, what do we do next. I'm not hiding out anymore."

Matt sipped at his whiskey before answering, and finally put it down with a sigh. He knew Kitty wasn't going to take this well, and he didn't mean her to. "Nope, you're leaving Friday morning for Hays on the stage. You'll have to be there to testify, and I think you'll be safer up there with Frank Reardon than here in Dodge with me."

All in all, Kitty didn't take it as badly as he had feared, but her temper surely did flare. Doc came in midway through her initial tirade, sat down, and started staring at her. Eventually, she wound down and stared back at him. "What? What is it? Doc?"

Doc took out a clean handkerchief, spit on it, and then wiped at a place on her jaw. He looked at the handkerchief and then put it back in his pocket, shaking his head. "Thought it might be dirt," he said, "What, did Matt hit you?"

"Doc!" Kitty was outraged.

"Bill hit you?" he asked.

Now Bill was offended. "Doc Adams you know damned well I've never laid a hand on Kitty in all the years…" he began, but his words petered out as Matt Dillon's hand came up to lift and turn Kitty's face towards the lamp hanging from the ceiling above them.

"Who hit you, Kitty?" Matt asked, his voice dead quiet.

Kitty took a deep breath. "Silas Warner's horse hit me, Matt Dillon," she told him, "And Bill and Doc both know that, even if you don't. So if you think you're going to get away with this by changing the subject, then you're dead wrong." But he wasn't. By the time Clem started clearing tables and pushing cowpokes out the door, it had been settled, if not agreed on, that Kitty would be leaving on the Friday morning stage for Hays.

"Want to give me that other key, Bill?" Matt asked rising, "I need to check out Kitty's room before she goes up." He held out his hand, and Bill reluctantly placed a key in it. Matt headed up the stairs and was gone for quite a few minutes. "Everything looks fine up there, Kitty," Matt told her when he returned, "You shouldn't have any problem sleeping in your own bed tonight." The bar room had been swept up while he was gone, and the last customers cleared away. Matt took the big key ring from Bill and handed it to Kitty, ushering Bill and Doc ahead of him out the front door. "You be sure and lock up tight after us, Kitty," he said, closing the door behind them as Bill headed right on the boardwalk towards his home, and Matt and Doc headed left towards Doc's office.

Kitty met them at the back door, arms crossed and foot tapping. "And just what would you do if I'd locked you out, Matt?"

"Throw pebbles at your window 'til you let me in." he said grinning and remembering earlier years, then more seriously, "Did you check the other doors, Kitty?"

"Yes I did, Matt. I always check the doors. I locked the front door, checked the cellar door and the side door, and then re-locked the door behind the bar before I came and opened this one," she said.

Matt's face was somber. "Only door I unlocked was this one, Kitty."

Kitty cussed fluently. Doc took her arm and started her up the stairs while Matt locked up behind them. "You're going to have to get rid of him, Kitty." Doc said.

"I think Doc's right, Kitty. You and the girls just aren't safe here with Bill managing the closings. I'll be up in a few minutes." Matt said, wandering away to check the premises for unwelcome visitors.

When they were finally settled in Kitty's room, Kitty and Doc seated, Matt standing by the window, it was Doc who started. "What was in those telegrams, Matt? Somebody at the other end had Barney scared spitless, he wouldn't tell me a word."

Matt shook his head, "He wouldn't tell you a word, but he handed you the telegrams themselves to give to me."

Doc shrugged, "I didn't hire the man."

"All right, here's what I know." Matt began, "Spike Marlow was an officer at Fort Leavenworth until about three months ago. He helped run the army prison there, and then he had the bad sense to seduce the Colonel's daughter. Now I say he seduced her because he accepted a company punishment of twenty lashes and the right to resign his commission instead of a court martial. If it had been rape, he'd have been court martialed and executed, so there had to have been at least some question."

"When we got to Peters, Chester and I found we were only a little more than an hour behind Marlow. He'd stopped there to eat a meal, buy a pair of boots and some other necessaries, and to buy a horse. He left the one he was riding – the one he stole – at the livery there in Peters with a note and ten dollars in gold."

Doc snorted, "Smart man."

Matt nodded, "Couldn't arrest him for horse stealing after he did that. Man had no idea anyone was pursuing him. If there'd been a decent hotel in Peters, we might have found him there in bed. In any case, Chester and I met him on the trail outside Larnad. He was as friendly as you please. He agreed that he'd been in the Long Branch, made some mighty loose talk about the girls there, but denied that anything was wrong when he left. I arrested him, and we rode on into Larnad. He, uh, got a little beat up when he was arrested. Tore his clothes up some, that's when I saw the lash marks on his back."

"You?" Kitty asked, but Matt shook his head.

"Chester," he replied, "Chester was real fond of Ellie." Kitty nodded, she'd known that. The fact that Ellen Sue was promised to Johnny, and the fact that she just served drinks without inviting men to her rooms had made her an especially comfortable companion for the shy jailer.

"When we got to Larnad and got Doc's telegram about the army discharge, and the things hidden in your room, I started sending telegrams to the army." Kitty's eyes moved towards the corner blocked off by the screen. "Yeah, they're still there, Kitty. We can give them back to him when he gets to Dodge if you like."

"Back to Dodge?" Kitty questioned him, "I thought he was going to be tried in Hays."

"That's what I wanted you to think, Kitty, and what I wanted Bill to think, but no, Judge Beck will hold his trial here a week from Friday. Too many of the witnesses are local to try to hold the trial up in Hays."

"Then why am I taking the stage for Hays Friday morning, Matt?" Kitty asked, her mouth grim.

And Matt gave her the only answer that she had to accept whether she liked it or not, "Because I have to keep you safe to testify against Marlow or he's going to walk free."

"What about the gold, Matt?" asked Doc, "Did you get any leads on that?"

"I did, but I don't know as they'll do any good." Matt replied, "Colonel Parkinson up at Fort Leavenworth thinks it could be from an army payroll robbed about three weeks ago. Five thousand dollars – all in five dollar gold pieces – was stolen on the way from Leavenworth to Fort Riley. There's a ten percent reward for its return. Marlow was in a position to have known the shipment schedules, and he also had an opportunity to get familiar with some of the men who'd recently been in the prison there for robbery. The other telegrams were from some local sheriffs between here and the Missouri border. Dodge wasn't the first place Spike moved through a whole saloon full of girls one after another and paid for it all with five dollar gold pieces."

"Well, he couldn't have spent the whole five thousand that way, Matt," Kitty reasoned, "There wasn't enough time. You think his partners have it? Or maybe that his partners are after him – and me – because he's the one who knows where the gold is hidden."

"That's what I'm afraid of, Kitty," Matt admitted, "Marlow's not likely to get more than five years for Ellie's death. Maybe ten since it's Judge Beck and not Judge Brooker, and that's a long time for his partners to wait for their share of the gold. Without your testimony, he's going to walk free, Kitty."

"Can't you charge him with the robbery, Matt?" Doc asked him, but Matt shook his head.

"We'd need to find more of the gold to do that, Doc, and Marlow's not talking. Man smiles a lot, but he doesn't say much to any purpose, and he's got a lawyer now up in Hays – that was in Frank's telegram. Not a really good lawyer, Doc. Marlow had less than a hundred dollars in his pocket when we brought him in, but a lawyer all the same, and that means it's going to be tougher for Kitty on the witness stand."

"I don't see how, Matt," Kitty told him boldly, "A whore is a whore, and once they get through that, what more do they have left?"

But Matt shook his head, and his voice was hard, "First they'll say that you sold Marlow Ellen Sue without her consent and for a higher price because she was a virgin – there's men that will pay extra for that and you know it – and then that you let Marlow leave his things here in your room because he was your lover. Next they'll say that when you shot him you were trying to kill him to keep him from talking about your dealings together. It's not going to be easy, Kitty."

Kitty's chin went up and she stared him down, "Then it won't be easy. I'm not going to back out now, Matt, and you know that."

"I do know that, Kitty, I've been thinking of it all the way south from Hays." Matt said quietly, "But I don't have to like it. And it's one reason that I'm going to arrange to keep you safe and out of the way until the trial begins."

Doc picked up his hat and headed for the door, his mouth set. "You come by tomorrow, Matt, and let me know what I can do to help. You don't need to see me out. I'll lock the alley door and slide the key back under. I'll see you both later."

Matt went to stand by Kitty's chair. They were quiet, looking at each other, not touching. The silence grew around them. Finally Kitty asked, "You said that was one reason you were going to keep me safe, Matt. What's the other?"

He looked down at her for a long time. She waited. When he spoke at last, the words were soft, "Because I love you, Kitty. And I can't lie to myself about that anymore."

She hadn't expected that. Despite their years together, she hadn't really understood how deeply honest he was – even with himself. She stood up and turned her back to him. He began slowly, one by one, unfastening the hooks down the back of her bodice. It gave her time to clear the tears from her eyes without letting them fall.