Saving Masterson

by Bill Brooks

  “I’m listening.”

  Giggle, giggle.

  “Shsssh…they’ll hear and the old man will come and pitch us out in the snow.”

  And the snow fell silent and for a long time, and Buck Pierce and Charlotte did not arrive back at the house for two days. And when they did arrive, some of the glow had worn off Buck’s face from the last time the boys got a look at him helping his new bride into the wagon to take her off for a honeymoon at the Mister hotel.

  Dirty Dave and Hannibal were feeding the horses and breaking ice plates out of the water buckets when Buck wandered over and said, “Boys, I’m about ready to get into the wind, how about you-all?”

  “We been ready,” Dirty Dave said.

  “How was it, the honeymooning part?” Hannibal said.

  Buck just looked at him and said, “It was about like before.”

  Dave said, “You all ready to go kill them Mastersons and get to that fat bank?”

  Buck looked off toward the house where Charlotte had gone inside.

  “Boys, I ain’t so sure I’m husband material,” he said.

  “Fellers like us never was meant to be the marrying kind,” Dirty Dave said. “I could have told you that much. Why, we got feet made of feathers.”

  “You done gone and got poetical ways,” Hannibal said.

  “You boys been in the whiskey again, ain’t you?” Buck said.

  They giggled, still thinking about the sounds they had heard last night, the mewing sounds Buck’s daddy had made with his mama, then saddled their horses and mounted them and Dave said, “You want to go kiss your bride good-bye before we leave on out of here? It might be a long time before we come back this way.”

  Buck said, “No, I guess I kissed her enough these last couple of days to last me a month or two.”

  “Well, let’s burn daylight.”

  So that’s what they did, they burned daylight. And when Charlotte came out to see where her new husband was, all she saw were horse tracks in the snow heading off toward the east, and those tracks looked like they were only headed one way and weren’t ever going to be heading any other.

  Her mama came out and stood next to her and they both stared off at the pewter sky and empty landscape that went all the way to the sky.

  “Men…” Charlotte said forlornly.

  But Charlotte’s mama only smiled a knowing smile. Men were the biggest mystery God had ever made. A mystery she’d stopped trying to figure out forty years ago. “They are what they are,” she said.

  A whistling wind chased them both back inside.

  Chapter 20

  After that night’s performance at the opera house, Dog invited everyone to his Alhambra for cocktails and a feast. Dog had it in mind to ask Dora’s hand in marriage. Among the honored guests were Eddie Foy, the famous comedian who had been the main entertainment that evening; Bat and Ed Masterson, who’d arrived back early enough for the last half of the show; Teddy and Mae; and Dora Hand, of course.

  Dog was magnanimous in his hosting, having had his barkeep set out a spread of food fit for a king, including fresh oysters, mussels, catfish, steaks big as dinner plates, hams, cakes and pies, his best bonded whiskey, and cocktails.

  “You certainly know how to put on the dog, Mayor,” the comic said. Dog thought it funny, that expression, added it to his personal collection of sayings and witticisms.

  Teddy waited until the right moment, then got Bat’s attention when they went to the bar to get cocktails for some of the others.

  “Frenchy paid me half the money,” Teddy said.

  “Then that’s good enough for me to arrest him.”

  “Maybe you could just talk to him, let him know that you know what he’s planning. I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

  “Never knew a Pinkerton to have sympathy for criminals.”

  “He’s no criminal. He’s doing it over a woman being abused by Bone. I saw Bone work her over tonight, saw her go straight to Frenchy’s.”

  “The Rose,” Bat said. “Should have known it was something along those lines. The only thing that surprises me is that Bone didn’t hire you to kill Frenchy instead of the other way around. Or, that Bone didn’t kill Frenchy himself.”

  “I doubt he knows.”

  “I do too. Bone’s one jealous sucker.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Bat looked at the drinks mixed by the barkeep.

  “Tonight, nothing. I’m tired from running down horse thieves and train robbers and seeing dead bodies and all the rest. I’d like to enjoy myself for one solitary evening. I’ll go see Frenchy in the morning. You got the money with you?”

  Teddy reached in his pocket, took out the purse and handed it to Bat.

  Bat hefted its weight.

  “Money and women and jealousy,” he said. “Bad concoction.” Then he took up the cocktails and walked them over to the table and set them down.

  Mae came to the bar just as Bat walked away and said, “Maybe we should leave, go someplace a little less crowded.”

  She had a smile that brought him comfort.

  “Yeah, maybe we should.”

  “Your place?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Me too.”

  It was sometime during the night, maybe early morning before daylight when someone pounded on the door. Teddy tumbled from the bed, leaving the warmth of Mae, reaching for his pistol as he did.

  She started to ask what was happening but he touched her lips with his finger.

  “Who is it?” he said through the closed door.

  “It’s me, Dog Kelly…”

  He opened the door. Dog was standing there looking glum, red-eyed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Somebody shot and killed my sweet Dora…”

  Dog nearly collapsed into the room. Teddy took hold of him and sat him in a chair. Dog was in tears as he told the story of how a rider came past his place twenty minutes earlier and fired into the little line shack he kept out back of the Alhambra.

  “She was in my bed sleeping. I guess whoever shot her thought it was me in there asleep. Poor, poor child…”

  Dog blubbered his heartache, finally got the words out that Bat and Ed were after the shooter.

  “They know who it was?”

  “It’s that Kennedy kid,” Dog said. “He’s been wanting me dead since I whipped him like a pup for rowdyism in my place last summer. His daddy owns the biggest ranch in Texas. Oh, gawd!”

  Mae discreetly dressed and poured Dog a drink and he looked at her and bawled all the more, remembering what beauty was and how fatal it could be, and his tears fell onto her hands as she held his to help steady the glass.

  “She’s gone!” Dog wailed. “My sweet Dora’s gone!”

  It was a full day before the Mastersons returned to Dodge with the boy in tow, his right arm shattered by one of Bat’s bullets.

  “Lock that peckerwood up,” Bat told Ed. “And if he tries anything, shoot him in the goddamn face like he shot Dora.”

  Teddy had seen them ride in, and walked over to the office.

  The kid, Kennedy, was just that, a petulant-looking boy who probably never knew what a lick of work felt like. He had wild black curls that sprawled from under his broad hat and chaps that had silver conchos stitched down the seams. He had dull unhappy eyes. Ed shoved him in a cell and slapped the door shut and locked it. The boy sat on the cot and knuckled his hat back from his forehead with his good arm, said, “I need a doctor, you busted my arm.”

  “Ought to let you bleed out,” Bat said. “You churlish little bastard.”

  Dog got word and came running over to the jail, his face red with anger and weeping half the night.

  “Let me at him!”

  Ed held him off. “He’ll get a trial.”

  “Forget the trial, let me at him.”

  “Can’t do it, you know that, Dog.”

  “Then you’re fired.”

  “You can’t
fire me.”

  Dog made a feeble attempt to grab Bat’s pistol but Bat slapped his hand away, said, “Go on home, Dog. Go get a drink or something. He’ll get his comeuppance. Let the law handle it.”

  Teddy noticed the boy’s expression never changed so much as a tick. He sat there as though waiting for a train to come, his hand-tooled boots crossed at the ankles.

  “Why’d you do it?” Dog shouted. “Why’d you shoot poor Dora?”

  This was when the boy looked up.

  “Meant to shoot you, old man. Never meant to shoot no woman.”

  Of course none of them could have known then that the boy’s justification would be good enough for a jury to acquit him several months later and let him ride back down to the biggest ranch in Texas with nothing more than a bunged-up arm that had one of Bat Masterson’s bullets in it.

  “He’ll hang for sure, Dog,” Ed said.

  Bat nodded his agreement.

  “Ain’t a jury in the state won’t find him guilty.”

  They just didn’t know that twelve men would see a different logic: that the kid wasn’t aiming to kill Dora but Dog, and if it wasn’t his intent to kill her, it was an accident. Dog would say after the acquittal that justice hadn’t been blind that day, that “she had her dang eyes poked out with a rich man’s stick!”

  But at the time there was only the sorrowful news to deal with, the business of burial at hand.

  Wind swept hard out of the north as the funeral cortege wound its way toward the cemetery outside of Dodge. Dog had ordered a fine headstone of marble from a Kansas City stonemason, but it would not arrive for three weeks. A couple of the boys dug a grave with picks and shovels. The ground was already growing hard from the cold nights. Dog paid for a new dress for Dora to be buried in: a black gown of mourning to match his black mourning suit. He paid for the finest casket the town had: a polished rosewood coffin with silver handles. The undertaker Haggard did prepare the lovely corpse, placing a think lace veil of black over Dora’s beautiful features. She’s a beauty, the mortician thought, almost desirous.

  Dora rode stately as a queen in the big glass-sided Sayers and Scovill hearse pulled by a matched pair of Morgans. Dog rode his bay alongside, weeping every step of the way, big cold tears rolling down his cheeks.

  Teddy and Mae rode in their rented cab behind the brass band Dog had hired to play the dirge. Half the townspeople turned out for the affair, the other half did not. The more respectable citizens, those who resided north of the deadline, saw little reason to attend the funeral of another dead prostitute. Dead prostitutes were a common event in Dodge and some of those self-respecting types saw no cause to give either credence or respect to a fallen cyprian.

  Small flakes of snow fell from the sky in a lazy manner, like it wasn’t in any more of a hurry to touch the ground and become lost than were the newly dead.

  “It’s so sad,” Mae said.

  And it was sad, the way she said it, and made the whole situation feel even sadder.

  “You ever lose anyone you loved?” Teddy asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  She touched his arm. The wind blew. The procession came to the cemetery. Dora was buried. The day was half over.

  Trouble was on its way.

  Chapter 21

  Frenchy was waiting outside Teddy’s hotel. “We need to talk,” he said.

  “I’ll come around to your place in a bit. I’ve got to see my company home.”

  Frenchy looked at Mae. “He’s found out, Bone has gotten word somehow.”

  “Go and wait for me at your place.”

  “You come soon, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  Frenchy stalked off.

  “What was that about?” Mae said as Teddy helped her from the cab.

  “Some odd business. Can I walk you back to the Wright House?”

  “No, you go ahead, take care of your odd business. Come around later when you’re finished.”

  He kissed her lightly on the mouth feeling the need to do just that in light of the events of the day. “I’m glad we met each other,” he said.

  “I am too.”

  They stood for a moment, each searching for that indescribable something in the other’s eyes.

  “There are things I want to ask you about yourself,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “And things I need to tell you about.”

  He saw something pass through her, something that turned her eyes sad.

  “Go on, we’ll talk later,” she said.

  He walked down to the Paris Club and was directed to the back room, where he found Frenchy pacing nervously.

  “He will kill me if you don’t kill him first,” Frenchy uttered.

  “I can’t kill him.”

  “Mon dieu! Why not?”

  “Tell me why you want him dead.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Is it because of the woman?”

  Frenchy stopped pacing.

  “How you know about her?”

  “I saw her come here the other night after Bone slapped her around.”

  Frenchy stopped pacing.

  “Yes it is because of her, how he treats her. If someone doesn’t stop him, then he will kill her someday and she will be buried like that other one and she will be just one more that nobody cares about. But I care! I care enough to kill him myself if you won’t do it.”

  “I can’t kill him, because I’m not who I represented myself as. I’m no assassin.”

  “Then why you—”

  “I can’t explain it right now, but I’ve got a job I need to do and it was one way of doing it, passing myself off as a gun for hire.”

  “Then I will kill him…”

  “And if he kills you, how will that protect the woman?”

  Frenchy sagged into the chair behind his desk.

  “You don’t understand, how it is I feel about her.”

  “Take her and leave Dodge if you love her that much.”

  “I can’t, everything I own is here in this place. Besides, why should I run?”

  “Your choice, my friend, but there’s nothing I can do for you. I’ve told the sheriff about the situation. He has the money you gave me. He’ll be around later to talk to you.”

  “You have betrayed me.”

  “Yeah, I guess maybe I have, but that wasn’t my intent.” Teddy felt sorry as hell for the little man, but he’d done all that he could for him. The rest would have to be left to someone else.

  He met Bat Masterson on the way out.

  “I’ve already told him what the situation is,” Teddy said.

  “I should arrest him but I’m running out of cells, what with the horse thieves me and Ed arrested, that kid who shot Dora, and Bad Hand Frank.”

  “Wait until Frenchy does something worth arresting him for.”

  “Like killing Bone?”

  “He’s no match for Bone Butcher.”

  “I should run ’em both out of town.”

  “Others like ’em will take their place.”

  “Hell. Least I ought to fine him some of this money,” Bat said, taking the purse from his pocket.

  “Dog thinks it’s narrowed down to Bone Butcher or Angus Bush who wants you and your brother dead.”

  “He’s probably about right on that score.”

  “Give me another day or two to see what I can find out, okay?”

  Bat looked at him. “I guess it doesn’t matter one way or the other. If it’s not one of them, it’ll be somebody else sooner or later. The law is like rain, it falls on those who want it and those who don’t. South of that deadline nobody wants it. We’ll see who wins out.”

  Teddy walked away. The snow was falling nicely now, steady and covering the fresh grave of Dora Hand in a lovely mantle of white just as it was covering the town of Dodge. Teddy longed for the warmth of the Mexican sun, a cool place in the shade of some adobe, sitting down there with John, drinking tequila and l
istening to the music in the plaza. It would be nice to be back down there with a woman like Mae—a place where the living was easy and practically nobody wanted to kill anybody.

  He walked up the street and into the Silk Garter.

  “Bone Butcher around?”

  The barkeep was wiping out glasses with a stained rag.

  “Back in his room,” the barkeep said, pointing with his chin.

  Teddy started back.

  “I wouldn’t I was you.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s got company. He don’t like being disturbed when he’s got company.”

  “Too bad.”

  The barkeep started to come around the end of the bar. He was a good-size, solid-built Dutchman. Teddy hit him with a solid right cross that exploded against the side of his head. The Dutchman went down, started to rise, sank back again and rolled over. It was a blow, if delivered right, that struck the temple and knocked a man cold.

  Teddy continued down the hall until he heard Bone’s voice coming from behind one of the doors. He kicked it open and walked in, pistol aimed.

  The Rose was tied facedown to the bed, naked from the waist up. Red lash marks striped her back and Bone was holding a buggy whip, ready to put a few more stripes on her.

  “What the hell—”

  “Put it down and untie her.”

  “Get the hell out of here!”

  Teddy thumbed back the hammer, saw Bone’s piggish eyes settle on the black maw aimed at his middle.

  “From what I hear, the funeral party would be small,” Teddy said.

  “What funeral party?”

  “Yours.”

  Bone’s whip hand lowered.

  “You the son of a bitch Frenchy hired to kill me.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “Go ahead if you’re up to it.”

  Teddy stepped in quick, brought the steel barrel of the Colt down hard across Bone’s forehead, splitting it open nearly as clean as if he had slashed him with a straight razor. Bone fell away from the blow grabbing handfuls of blood.

  Teddy stood over him, the barrel just inches from his face.

  “Get a real close look, it might just be the last thing you see.”

  Bone made a movement and Teddy hit him again, this time across the collarbone, then pressed the barrel of the revolver to the bloody wound.