"What's bothering you, Matt?" Kitty had been silently studying the face she knew so well as they sat at their usual table near the stairs in the Long Branch. She loved how the smoothness of his younger face had aged into such weathered handsomeness. Every crease was earned from long, hard time in the saddle exposed to the harsh Kansas sun and wind. And when his face opened into a big grin, the creases added character to the expression of his happiness. But now there was a deep furrow between his eyebrows, and his eyes were seeing something only he could see in his mind as he stared off into the distance.
"What? I'm sorry, Kitty. What did you day?" Matt blinked twice and focused his clear blue eyes on the lovely, concerned face so near his.
"I asked what's bothering you, 'cause something definitely is!" She saw that his mug of beer was still untouched, the foam now flat and the liquid warm from his big hands wrapped around the glass. "Sam! Two more beers, please!" she called, smiling at her head barkeep and good friend.
After Sam set the fresh, sweating mugs down and returned to the bar, the Marshal picked his up and smiled at his companion. "Here's looking at you, Kitty," he said before taking a sip.
"Thank you," she replied with her own smile. She took a small sip and patiently waited, watching him organize his words as he looked down into the mug in front of him on the table.
"Kitty. You remember me talking about my old friend and mentor, Clifton Falcon? Used to be a U.S. Marshal down in Texas? Well, his wife died young, leaving Cliff to raise their three boys himself. He really tried hard to be a good father, remarried, and he and his second wife did all they could for the boys. The oldest, Carlton, and the middle boy, Shepard, became good, responsible men." Matt sighed and took a bigger sip of the cool beer and cleared his throat. "Then there is Nealy. The youngest. Cared for, loved, raised just like his brothers. But he went bad, Kitty, real bad. Only twenty-three now, but he has already been involved in at least a dozen store break-ins, four stage hold-ups, and two bank robberies." Looking up from his beer again, Matt's steely eyes bored into Kitty's. "He killed a teller in the first bank job, and two customers in the second. And now it's been reported that he's on his way to Dodge. Kitty, Nealy blames me for the bullet wound that scarred his face. I didn't fire that shot, but while he was fleeing the posse from the first bank robbery, our paths crossed. I was riding back from Hays-you remember when I escorted Carver Winthrop? Well, I saw a fast-riding man off to the east, not knowing it was Falcon or anything about the robbery and killing, but when he saw me, it distracted him enough to veer and hesitate. Just long enough for a lucky shot from one of the posse to hit his face." Matt paused again, then added, "If Nealy does come here, then eventually so will Cliff. Somehow, his father will know." After such an uncharacteristically long speech, the big man seemed to run out of steam, and lowered his head, staring down at his beer, lost in his thoughts of young Nealy as a laughing, pink-cheeked, little boy. His proud lawman father, Clifton, had proudly introduced his littlest son to the young, tall deputy. When the happy child had wrapped his arms around Matt's leg, and looked up with big blue eyes, the young deputy had looked down, smiled back, and a special bond had formed.
Kitty had a heart "as big as a watermelon," according to Doc, and now it ached for the pain she knew was in Matt's for having to once again confront an old friend and now the friend's outlaw son. Reaching over, she put her right hand on Matt's forearm and squeezed. Sometimes there were no words.
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Later that night, Matt had to lock up three rowdy, drunken trail hands from the Lazy-R crew, set on destroying every saloon in town. Festus had gone to visit a friend in Jetmore, so the Marshal would have to spend the night on the narrow cot in his office. He had down so innumerable times, and by now could sleep anywhere, including practically standing up. But he always missed the deep comfort of holding Kitty's warm, sweetly soft body against him up in the big brass bed above the saloon. While they shared their bed, holding each other close, the rest of the world faded away.
After dumping the first limp, singing drunk on the cot in the cell on the right, he prodded the two slumped at the table in the office into the cell in the back, set up with two cots. It was 2AM and Matt felt the weariness in his mind and bones. Putting the big ring of the jail keys over the worn, wooden peg, he closed the door to the cells, walked to the front door, and slid the metal locking rod into place. Then he hung his big Stetson on the top peg beside the door, undid his gun belt and went to the cot near the back door. Rolling up the gun belt, he placed it on the small cabinet beside the cot, gun and holster positioned for a quick reach. With a sigh, the big man sat down heavily on the cot that creaked under his weight, and pulled off his boots, whacking the leather over the top of each arch with his hand to loosen the fit. Letting the boots thunk to the floor, he exhaled, lay back and swung his long legs onto the bed. A moment after closing his eyes, he was asleep.
Then the dreams came. First was his final showdown long ago with Dan Grat, who was a faster draw but a poorer aim. Grat had grievously wounded Matt after getting the Marshal to step closer and closer. As he recovered, Matt figured out that Grat needed his rivals to be close to make up for his poor aim, and refused to do so in their final meeting. The lawman was a second or less slower, but deadly accurate. Matt had paid the price earlier, but had learned how vital his precise aim was.
The next necessary quick draw in his dreams occurred when mean rancher Stoner refused Matt's order to drop his aimed rifle. The shooting was definitely self-defense on the Marshal's part, but Stoner's widow wanted vengeance and offered one-thousand dollars for Matt's death. When a poor young "nestor" man desperate to feed his starving family had fired on Matt, he had to be shot and killed. There had been nothing else the lawman could have done, but that didn't make it any easier to watch the boy die.
Morgan and Abe Curry appeared, smiling and joking with Matt and Kitty on their last visit to town together. Brothers who did everything together. When Abe was senselessly gunned down by Tom Clegg, Morgan managed to prod the mean gunslinger into shooting him. The Marshal was forced into a confrontation with Clegg, who died, with satisfied Morgan dying when he found out, having made Matt into an "executioner." As the lawman ruefully told Doc, "Just another thing to forget."
Then the long-buried, painful memories wrapped their dark threads around the sleeping man's mind. Men he had once considered friends before he had been given less than one second to kill. Men such as Hack Prine, Toque Morton, and Jack Pinto. Then there was Zel. Zel Blatnik. The only time Matt had notched his gun grip. Not in bragging, as the hired killers did, but in painful memory of accidentally killing a close friend who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although not a raw pain after so many years, it still sat like a smoldering coal in the deep recesses of his mind. The smooth wooden grips with the one notch had been changed out to stag horn ones some years back, due to the uneven surfaces lessening any slippage, and Matt knew he needed no physical reminder of something that would always stay inside of him. It taught him a hard lesson of ensuring anyone assisting him stuck rigidly to the agreed-on plan.
Without Kitty to awaken and sooth him, the tormented man tossed and turned on the narrow cot, sweat beading his forehead, and murmured words escaping his lips. When the memory of burying Zel in a leafy, peaceful spot by the river came to him, he awoke with a start, and sat up with eyes searching the dark room, seeing his old friends in the far shadows. Shaking the ghosts from his head, he sighed, swung his legs over the side of the cot and put his damp, curly head in his hands. "Whew! Haven't had a nightmare like that in ages!" Pulling on his boots, he stomped them into place on the floor, stood, stretched, and walked over to the small, pot-bellied stove by the front window. He picked up the old, blue enameled coffee pot, shook it to check for water, then set it back down and scooped in a generous amount of coffee grounds that Festus had prepared before he left, saying, "No eggshells, chicory, or nuthin' but coffee fer me!" Smiling, he thought back about old friend Chester's never-dull coffee concoctions as he slid another piece of wood into the stove. Chester and his wife ran a thriving restaurant up in Topeka, and Matt and Kitty and Doc had just been visiting them a month ago. Still smiling as he thought of how happy his good friend was, Matt sat down at his desk, lit the lamp, and started in on the endless stack of papers always waiting for him. A curl of the latest wanted posters lay on top, so he picked it up and using both hands, opened the roll of four stiff papers and spread them apart on his desk. An updated one on Nealy Falcon, listing a fourth robbery and murder, was the top one.
To Be Continued…