Saving Masterson

by Bill Brooks

  Bat hardly seemed to acknowledge his brother as he read On the Life of a Man and was particularly struck by some of the lines: What is our life? A play of passion…when we are drest for this short Comedy…

  In the background he could hear Ed’s snores. Darkness, complete and black as hell, lay outside the window.

  Our graves that hide us from the searching Sun, Are like drawne curtaynes when the play is done…

  But he took a deep breath and sighed. Took from his other pocket the Peacemaker and laid it on the nightstand, and next to it the book of poems as his thoughts turned over images of graves hid from the searching sun and the passionate life he was sure somehow he was not quite living.

  Brother Ed was asleep as the dead.

  We were boys once, and now we’re men, thought Bat.

  He felt fully alone in the world, and sleep did not come so easily.

  Chapter 6

  Gunshots announced night had fallen in Dodge. Teddy rose from the bed and went to the window and looked out. He saw no bodies lying on the streets. It was a good sign.

  He slipped on the shoulder rig with the Colt Lightning, then his coat and hat and went out. On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the town north of the tracks seemed asleep, the shops locked, few pedestrians. He walked down toward the south end of town, where Dog Kelly said the rumors and the men possibly behind the rumors to kill the Mastersons ran the pleasure trade.

  Once he reached the tracks he crossed them, and the quiet world slipped away. The saloons were in full swing. He did a quick count of half a dozen of them either side of the street. He drifted into the first one he came to, The Paris Club. There wasn’t anything French about it other than the name. It looked like every other saloon he’d ever been in: full of loud men and other noises, cigar smoke and bad smells. He worked his way to the bar and ordered a short whiskey and took his time with it.

  When he finished and the barkeep came over again, Teddy asked to talk to the owner, asked for him by name—Frenchy LeBreck—the name Dog Kelly had given him earlier.

  “That’s him over to the faro bank,” the barkeep said.

  “Bring me a beer,” Teddy said.

  Teddy waited nearly an hour before LeBreck took his leave of the faro bank and drifted over to the bar.

  “My name’s Blue,” Teddy said, “I’d like a private word with you.”

  LeBreck was a short wiry man with eyebrows that looked like they’d grown together, fierce hawkish eyes.

  “A possible business proposition,” Teddy said when he saw LeBreck’s hesitation.

  LeBreck motioned for him to walk to the end of the bar. Once done, LeBreck said, “What sort of proposition?” The accent was Cajun if anything, Teddy surmised.

  “I’m a man who does things for a price,” Teddy said.

  “What sort of things, eh?”

  “Things most other men won’t do.”

  LeBreck placed both hands on top of the bar, flat.

  “I’ve no time to talk foolishness, mon ami.”

  “Like I said, my name’s Blue, Teddy Blue, and I’m staying at the Dodge House, room twelve.” Teddy drew the front of his coat open far enough for LeBreck to get a look at the gun, then let it fall closed again.

  LeBreck’s eyes met his.

  “What makes you think—”

  “There’s always someone in need of the type of work I do. If not you, maybe somebody you know. I’m just putting the word around.”

  LeBreck said, “I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about,” and walked away.

  The seed was planted. It was enough—time to move on.

  He crossed the street to the Black Cat, one of the other three places Dog Kelly had mentioned. Aside from being a little narrower, you couldn’t tell this saloon from the first. This time, when he asked for the owner, the big man tending bar said, “I’d be him. Angus Bush.”

  Teddy dropped a silver dollar on the bar, ordered a cocktail.

  “Fancy drink, don’t get too many calls for ’em,” Angus Bush said, mixing up the drink and setting it on the oak. “Fact is, the only other man I ever met who drank them regular was Wild Bill Hickok. Had me a place in Abilene a few years back when he was the law there. He’d come in just about every night and order a cocktail.”

  “He’s dead, you know.”

  “Yes, so I’ve heard.” Angus Bush looked at Teddy suspiciously. “Have we met?”

  Teddy said, “I think you’d remembered if we had.”

  Angus Bush, unlike Frenchy LeBreck, was a huge barrel-chested man with hands like small hams. His wiry beard looked like a tangle of rusted wire.

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t, but it’s Blue, Teddy Blue.”

  Teddy could see Bush turning the name over in his mind, trying to dredge up a memory that he wouldn’t find.

  “Just to let you know,” Teddy said. “I’m available for certain kinds of work.”

  “And what kinds would that be?”

  Teddy fingered back the front of his coat enough to give Angus Bush a look at the iron he carried in the shoulder rig.

  “That kind,” he said.

  “I see.”

  “In case you hear of anything, I’d appreciate it,” Teddy said, dropping another dollar on the bar. “I’m staying at the Dodge House, room twelve.”

  He could feel Angus Bush’s stare on his shoulder blades as he walked out, leaving the cocktail untouched on the bar.

  He hit a couple more places before coming to the Silk Garter, a much larger establishment than the others—more garish. There was loud piano music coming from inside. Teddy could see the place was doing a good business. In a short time he could see why: There were twice as many saloon girls working the Garter as there were in the other places.

  Two roulette tables, a faro bank, buck the tiger, and chuck-a-luck games, as well as regular poker were heavily played. A long bar took up all of one wall.

  Teddy asked one of the three bartenders for Bone Butcher Swain.

  “He’s busy,” the man said.

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “He won’t allow himself being disturbed when he’s with the Rose.”

  “The Rose?”

  “The Rose of Cimarron.”

  “When might he be available?”

  “Hard to say. Sometimes its an all-nighter, know what I mean?” the barkeep said with a sly wink.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ll come back around tomorrow.”

  “You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  The barkeep looked him over, then moved down to another patron.

  Teddy felt hunger gnawing at his ribs, realized he hadn’t eaten in a long time. When he left the Garter, he walked back up across the tracks to the Wright House for dinner. It’s where he met the woman, Mae.

  She had hair like the morning sun and eyes blue as a clear Kansas sky and he knew he should ignore those two attributes when she waited on his table, but he could not. Their eyes met and held—her clear blue ones, his dark serious ones.

  He mused over the menu written in chalk on a board there on the wall, but stealing glances at her in between, asking questions like how was the beef and so forth, anything to engage her in conversation.

  “You don’t have to try so hard,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do.”

  He smiled.

  “If you don’t order something I’m going to have to wait on someone else,” she said.

  So he ordered the beef with roasted potatoes and a cup of coffee, and she brought him the coffee first and he said thank you and she looked at him again and said, “I haven’t seen you in here before.”

  “I just got into town this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” she said, and he could hear the wariness in her voice.

  She went off to wait on others and returned in fifteen minutes with his steak and set the plate before him and asked if
there was anything else he needed.

  “Not right this moment, but I might have some dessert when I’m finished. And, some more coffee when you get a chance.”

  “Surely,” she said. He liked the aloof way she said it, but with a smile in her eyes.

  He couldn’t say what it was about her that attracted him apart from the obvious: that she was good-looking. It was more than just the fact that she was pretty.

  He ate slowly so he could observe her, to see how many times she might come over and refill his coffee cup or glance in his direction. She seemed to pay him no greater attention than anyone else and he felt a little disappointed.

  Finally he finished and pushed his plate away and took out his makings and rolled himself a cigarette and lit it.

  She came to take his plate and he said, “I think I’ll try the apple pie.”

  She went off and came back again in a few minutes with a plate of pie and set it before him and said, “I’ve heard it’s excellent.”

  “We could split it,” he said.

  A smile played at the edges of her mouth. “I’m not really allowed to socialize,” she said. “The boss doesn’t want us to engage with the customers.”

  “How else are you supposed to know what they want?”

  “You know quite well what I mean.”

  “I apologize,” he said. She walked away. He finished the pie and washed the last of it down with the coffee still warm in his cup and stood. He left a dollar tip on the table next to the cup.

  He settled his Stetson down on his head and headed for the door. She was waiting on a couple when he walked past.

  “I get off in an hour,” she said.

  “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  He saw the couple smile.

  It was the slowest damn hour he remembered having to wait. He thought about John Sears in that time and smoked several more cigarettes and felt the night around him as people came and went. Then at last the lights started going out inside the restaurant and suddenly there she was.

  “My name is Mae,” she said. “Mae Simmons.”

  “Teddy Blue,” he said. “Can I walk you home?”

  “I’m staying at Caldwell’s Boarding House. It’s where most of the single girls stay,” she said. “But we don’t need to go straight there. I like to walk for a time, if you wouldn’t mind. Just to see the stars…”

  “Then let’s just walk,” he said.

  They walked out toward the edge of town. He could hardly hear her footsteps on the boards.

  “Where did you come from?” she asked.

  “Down in Mexico, but before that, Chicago.”

  “Really? You’re a man who gets around a lot.”

  “Yes, I reckon so. What about you?”

  “I came here from Canada.”

  “Tell me how you managed to make your way to Dodge,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s such an odd and probably boring story.”

  “I’ve got all night, Mae.”

  So she told him about the husband who’d brought her down from Canada—his name was Jim Belt. She said he had been a good man except for one weakness—gambling—and that it had cost him his life. This happened a year ago, she said.

  “How come you stayed? Dodge doesn’t seem like much of a town for a young widow.”

  “My late husband didn’t leave an estate,” she said. “I had to work. I’m saving every spare nickel, knowing that someday I will be able to leave here and start a new life. I’m not exactly sure where I want to go when I do leave, but I’ll be ready when the time comes.

  “You said your husband’s last name was Belt?”

  “I took back my maiden name after he died. There was no reason to keep it, we’d only been married two years—two very bad years, when I think back on it.”

  They stood there at the very edge of town, and even though the night was cold it was clear and they could see a million stars and a new moon so full and bright it looked like they could almost walk up to it and put their hands on it.

  “I love to imagine what it would be like to go to the moon,” she said. “To go any place exotic and far away.”

  Something about her voice—a touch of sadness, perhaps—caused him to think of Anne.

  “What is it?” she said. He hadn’t realized how long he’d fallen silent.

  “I was just thinking about another woman I know who also lost her husband last year.”

  “Someone you were in love with?”

  He looked at her. “Why would you think that?”

  “Just the way you sounded.”

  And then an odd thing happened. A horse, un-saddled, ran across the prairie. At that distance and under the moon’s light, the horse looked like a silver shadow.

  “Look,” she said.

  And for several moments after the horse passed from view they could hear the thud of its hooves. Then silence reclaimed the prairie.

  “How strange,” she said.

  “Perhaps it is some sort of sign.”

  She drew her capote closer around her shoulders. “It’s getting cold,” she said. “We should start back.”

  They walked along without speaking until they reached the front of the boarding house where she was staying.

  “This is it,” she said.

  “Thank you for the walk, Mae.”

  “Teddy…”

  “Yes?”

  It was as though she wanted to ask him something important. He waited but she said, “Oh, nothing.”

  “I know it must seem to you like we’re strangers, Mae. But there’s something about you that makes me feel as though I’ve known you for longer than just a few hours.”

  “I feel it too.”

  Somewhere off in the darkness they heard dogs barking.

  “I’d like to go for another walk sometime,” he said.

  “So would I…Good night.”

  He waited until she’d gone inside the house before starting back to his room at the hotel. He wasn’t quite sure what to feel toward her, considering he still had deep feelings for Anne and lingering ones for Kathleen. It felt a lot like betrayal somehow, to have feelings for yet another woman.

  The moon stood high over Dodge now and the town seemed to stand defiant and ready for the worst to happen. It was as though the town in its starkness shouted silently: I will swallow your whiskey and gunshots and empty your pockets. I will tempt you with whores and fill you with sin and bury you with your boots still on and not look back. And a thousand moons will rise and fall over your graves and I will still be here.

  He could not help but feel some unknown force had brought him and the woman together for a reason that none of them would understand until it became a fait accompli.

  John probably would have said, “Fuck all that thinking, son. Just let things be as they are and don’t question none of it.”

  John would have been right.

  Chapter 7

  The Pepper twins were arguing over who should get first turn with Mosely’s wife in the back of the wagon when Two Bits shot them.

  Mosely was sitting on a bucket shivering from the tremors brought on by all the snakehead whiskey he’d drank that morning and all the mornings up until that morning. Mosely’s wife waited impatiently for the twins to come to some decision. It was cold there in the back of the wagon.

  “Mosely, tell them young’ns to hurry it up,” she called. Every time she spoke his name, Mosely’s headache seemed to grow worse.

  Lord, how did I ever sink so low in life as to be a drunk and a pimp for my own wife? he wondered achingly. It had been a pretty morning right up until Two Bits shot the brothers. Mosely had camped by a stream outside of Red Mountain—just far enough outside of the town to avoid violating any pandering laws the town might have, or any sheriffs it might have to enforce pandering laws if there were any. Mosely had once been a student of the law before he fell into the clutches of the demon rum, as Mosely’s wife called it.

  Everything about his current situa
tion seemed to Mosely surreal, like a real bad dream that just kept playing over and over in his head. He was half tempted to shoot himself just to see if it was a dream. But even attempted suicide seemed too large a task for Mosely that particular morning. And besides, he had no bullets for the rusty revolver in his belt.

  It was Mosely’s wife who had first suggested how they could make a little money. At first he protested. It seemed unseemly, even for a man who’d sunk to Mosely’s condition, to be pimping for his own wife.

  He said as much. She laughed, said to him, “Well, are we going to eat dirt to stay alive, or do you have some better plan?” Mosely’s wife could be harsh when she wanted to be.

  It was true; Mosely had not a single nickel to his name to buy so much as a loaf of bread, and had traded away everything he’d owned of value for liquor except the wagon and the old horse that pulled it, and judging the way the horse had been acting lately, Mosely was sure that the horse was not long for this world either.

  “I can leave you and let you fend for yourself, Mosely,” she said. “I can leave you out here in this wilderness to die a slow and terrible death, or you can swallow that foolish pride of yours along with the last few drops of that poison you call liquor and overlook what it is I have to do. It’s your choice, Mosely.”

  He could not but conclude that she did love him, even if her reason for doing so escaped him. He wasn’t sure if he loved her, but he had no one else to care for him.

  Bernard, one of the twins, was arguing that since he was paying for both of them he should go first with Mosely’s wife. Hank, the other one, reasoned that it was he who’d done the negotiating with Mosely and got him down to a price that matched the amount in their pockets, and that he ought to go first.

  Mosely had met his wife in a Leadville whorehouse several years previous. She was so pretty he stole her in the middle of the night. She’d put up little protest. Mosely had been wild back in those days—wild and bold and a regular rootin’ tootin’ cowboy of the first order. Now he just felt old and foolish.

  “We’ll flip a coin for it,” one of the twins said. Mosely had forgotten which one was Bernard and which was Hank, not that it mattered. He thought it was Hank who suggested flipping a coin. What little Mosely knew about them was that they were a rich cattleman’s progeny who had too much time on their hands and more money in their pockets than boys their age should be entitled to. This much he’d learned about them the first time they visited his camp and paid for the privilege of consorting with Mosely’s wife. This event having taken place a week previous. They had ridden in two more times, not counting this day.