Saving Masterson

by Bill Brooks

  There could be no good coming from such an outlaw life. But the prairies were a lonely far-flung place, and a body had to do whatever a body could to survive for however long God appointed to each poor soul, hers included.

  “Let’s go it again,” Two Bits said. “Then after, you can fix me a nice plate of grub whilst I clean my guns.”

  She closed her eyes and felt his weight lower onto her, knowing that it would not be too many more times that she would feel such a thing—that their appointed time was growing short and soon there would be no weight at all, no white flesh, no startling eyes searching for her hidden beauty…

  …and heard the windsong along the eaves like a whisper, mournful, like a sad old choir of the long lost voices of all those who had passed before and were now crying out their warning. And when the wind rattled the bare branches of a lone cottonwood that scraped and clicked against the window glass, it sounded like bones rattling.

  Two Bits stuck the whole ride.

  Chapter 18

  Mae and Teddy made their way back to Dodge just after sunset, a silver light still playing in the westerly sky but the land growing full of dark now.

  “You feeling like me?” he said.

  “In what way?”

  “That I hate to see this evening come to an end.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “There’s an opera house,” he suggested.

  “I’d love to go.”

  “Eddie Foy is playing there. I saw it on the playbill earlier.”

  “It would be such a nice way to spend the evening.”

  “Afterward we could…”

  “Yes, I was thinking the same thing.”

  He liked very much how her thoughts seemed to coincide with his own. It was a little spooky.

  “Drop me off so I can freshen and change clothes,” she said.

  They agreed on a time that he would come around and pick her up and sealed it with a light kiss. He waited until she went into the boarding house before he returned the cab and horse to the stables.

  He was walking back up from the stables toward his hotel when he encountered Frenchy LeBreck.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Frenchy said.

  “You found me.”

  “I have the money.”

  “Let’s go in and have a drink.”

  “It is not necessary. Here.” Frenchy took a small leather purse from his coat and handed it to Teddy.

  “Two hundred dollars in gold double eagles. I’ll get you the rest when it is finished, eh?”

  Teddy hefted the purse.

  “Let’s get a drink, I feel like having a drink.”

  Frenchy seemed reluctant. “I have to go meet someone,” he said. “When will you do it?”

  “A time and place of my choosing.”

  “It must be done soon.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it soon.”

  “Good, good. I go now. You come see me when you’ve done it.”

  Teddy watched him stalk off toward the deadline, saw the shadows swallow him like the black maw of a monster that ate men with dark hearts.

  He went to find one of the Mastersons to give him the money and wash his own hands of the affair.

  He checked first at the city marshal’s office. It was closed. He went down to the Lone Star. Jim was the only Masterson in attendance.

  “I’m trying to locate Bat and Ed,” Teddy said.

  Jim was like the rest of them—dark eyes that held a combination of wariness and amusement.

  “I ain’t seen either of ’em in the last couple of hours.”

  “You expect them in? It’s important.”

  “I think they went off looking for some stole horses.”

  “Let me have a whiskey.”

  Jim poured it with hands as smooth as porcelain and set it there on the oak.

  “Ed and Bat told me the story on you,” Jim said. “I just want you to know, I think Dog did the right thing sending for you.”

  Teddy nodded, sipped his drink. “They probably told you too then, word can’t get out about who I am.”

  Jim nodded. “Mastersons never look for trouble,” he said. “But we don’t ever run from it either. They’ve got nothing against you personally, it’s just that they like to fight their own fights.”

  “What about you?”

  “Oh hell, I like to fight my own fights too, I’m just not a fighter like them. I prefer the pursuit of business—you know, make everyone happy, give ’em what they want if they’re willing to pay for it.”

  “Well, nobody’s asking anybody to run.”

  “I just wanted you to know I’m not against the idea of your being here to help us out. You need anything from me, just ask.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Jim nodded, said, “Here comes Dog sporting a new gal.”

  Teddy turned, saw Dog Kelly and his new employee, Dora Hand. Dog had dusted off his beaver hat and slapped a shine on his coat and shoes and looked like a grandee. Dora looked elegant as only a slightly aging chanteuse could. Her face was powdered to a rare whiteness and she had a dark little mole the size of a raisin there at the corner of her mouth alongside the very red painted lips.

  Dog looked like he was about to burst out of his waistcoat with pride.

  “Boys!” he announced loudly enough for everyone in the place to hear. “Like you all to meet the new singer here in town, Miss Dora Hand.”

  Dora smiled in a queenly way.

  Jim licked his lips.

  Dog ordered Dora a liqueur and himself a cocktail.

  “Could I have a word with you in private?” Teddy said while they waited for Jim to mix their drinks.

  Dog looked disappointed to have his lovely time interrupted with business. He led Dora to a table and pulled the chair out for her, then scooted it back in again as Jim brought over their drinks.

  “Well, we just stopped in before going to the opera,” Dog said.

  “It’s about that situation with Frenchy.”

  “Excuse me for one moment, my dear.”

  Teddy and Dog walked off a few steps.

  “What’s new on that situation?” Dog liked talking in terms that spoke of situations.

  “Frenchy gave me a down payment to kill Bone,” Teddy said, tapping the purse of gold in his coat pocket.”

  “You talked to Bat and Ed about it?”

  “Bat wanted me to get the money so he could arrest Frenchy. I got half the money but Bat’s off chasing after stolen nags somewhere.”

  Dog squinted in his deliberation.

  “I could deputize you and—”

  “No good if you still want me to maintain my secrecy and find out who’s out to assassinate the Mastersons.”

  “Well, just stall for time, wait until Bat and Ed get back.”

  “Frenchy wants it done soon.”

  “He say why he’s in an all-hell-fire hurry to get Bone dead and in the ground?”

  “Who knows?”

  Dog saw Jim lingering around Dora’s table, chatting amiably with her and she with him and it made him feel itchy because Jim was a nice-looking man with the charm of a faro dealer.

  “I got to get back over there or old Jim will be bedding her before I ever get to hear her sing a single note.”

  “You learn anything more on your end about who it is wants Ed and Bat dead?”

  “I got it narrowed down to either Angus Bush or Bone Butcher. Course you was to kill Bone for Frenchy, that would take care of some of it.” Dog smiled at the half joke, said, “I trust you’ll know what to do, Mr. Blue, gotta go.”

  Teddy left the Lone Star and walked down to Bone Butcher’s.

  The night, as nights went in a rip-roaring town like Dodge, was young yet, but already the Silk Garter seemed in full swing. The Garter was a place where a man could buy just about anything he could at any of the other saloons and dance halls south of the Deadline, it was just that a man could buy things cheaper at Bone’s place. You could taste it in the
watered-down liquor that sold for a nickel a glass less than the other places. You could hear it in the clack of the roulette wheel that wouldn’t take a genius to figure out it was probably rigged so a gambler would win one out of every thirty times instead of one out of every twenty. You could tell it in the weary expressions of the aging dance-hall queens who were only one cut above the crib girls.

  Bone was there at a table gambling with four other men. Beneath his derby resided a broad flat face that had a fighter’s nose. He laughed louder than everyone else, and talked louder. He had a presence about him that dominated and cowed the others around him. He was a man of force, somebody that would go the whole line with you if you got him riled. He was the type of man that you’d better be prepared to kill if you got into a fight with him. He had priggish eyes bereft of any human kindness.

  Teddy studied the man long enough to understand what he thought he needed to know about him. Then just as he was about to walk out of the place, he saw Bone rise suddenly from the table and go quickly to a woman standing at the bar and take hold of her roughly.

  There were words exchanged between them, words that were lost in the din and cacophony of the crowd. He saw Bone slap the woman hard enough to snap her head to the side. Nobody tried to intervene. He saw the woman run out the back door holding the side of her face. Bone walked back to his table and joined his game, laughing, as though he’d just gone over to squash a cockroach he’d seen crawling along the bar. As though it meant no more to him than that—to slap a woman.

  Teddy left the place. He’d seen all of Bone Butcher he wanted to see. Such a man probably deserved killing by someone at some time or place, but Teddy told himself he wasn’t going to be the one to do it, in spite of what he’d just seen.

  He crossed the street and was walking toward the Paris Club when he saw the woman that Bone Butcher had violated enter a side door. Then it dawned on him why Frenchy wanted Bone dead.

  Love was as good a reason as any to kill for—perhaps better than most. At least killing for love seemed somehow noble.

  He figured it was time to go clean up and pick up Mae for the opera house. Let the night have its sinners and injustices. There was always tomorrow to confess and seek forgiveness and right the wrongs.

  There would still be heaven and there’d still be Dodge City.

  Chapter 19

  Charlotte’s daddy was beat black and blue still, but the old man had forgiven the boys for their ill behavior, so glad was he to have his eldest daughter married off—even to a man of Buck Pierce’s caliber. Charlotte’s daddy figured that, when Buck wasn’t drinking or stealing or doing some of the other illegal activity he and Hannibal often got involved in, he wasn’t that bad a feller. He treated Charlotte right, never abused her, and once she was married, the old man figured Charlotte would give up the whoring profession and restore what little honor there had been to the Myers family name.

  They all stood around the yard waiting for the circuit preacher to arrive, Dirty Dave Rudabaugh among them. Charlotte’s women kin had decorated tables and laden them with all manner of food. Some of the men had brought homemade whiskey in crocks and a barrel of ice beer. Kids ran around the yard like wild Indians. The ground where there was still shade from the outbuildings held frost from the night before.

  Hannibal and Buck and Dirty Dave stood together, the wind tugging at their coats.

  “This is a funny time of year to get married,” Dirty Dave said, looking up at the smoky sky. It was a chill wind that tugged at their coats and at Dirty Dave’s long brutish moustaches: icy, with the breath of winter in it.

  Hannibal and Buck looked at Dave when he said that it was a funny time of year to get married.

  “Why’s it funny?” Hannibal said.

  “Just seems most folks get married in the spring or summer is all. Hardly nobody gets married this late in the year. It’s dang near winter. Why I wouldn’t be surprised if it don’t snow before the day is out.”

  Buck and Hannibal looked up at the sky. They didn’t see any snow.

  The elder Myers came over, his face blotchy with bruises. He wore his hat gentle on his head because of the sore knots the boys had raised on it beating him. He walked with a slight limp too, from where they kicked him some.

  “I’m sure sorry about the other night,” Buck said. “I don’t know what got into us.”

  “Bad liquor is what got into you boys,” Myers said, but then quickly added: “Course, you boys is yet young and wild and I know what that’s like. I was that-a-way myself once. I’m pure ashamed at some of the things I did in my youth. Weddings is a time to bury hatchets and forget the past and that’s what I aim to do. All is forgiven.”

  “Have a drink, sir,” Hannibal said, offering a jug of homebrew that one of the guests had brought.

  Myers looked at him.

  “I don’t think we should start to drinking until after the ceremony. You know how you boys get when you drink.”

  Hannibal and Buck nodded their heads.

  “Not me,” Dirty Dave said. “I don’t get no way when I drink except happy.” He took hold of the jug and took a long pull from it. “Tastes like glory,” he said.

  Hannibal and Buck were about to break down and taste some of the glory too when somebody shouted the preacher was coming. They could see him there across the broad lifeless prairies. Riding a switch-tail mule looking like Moses crossing the wilderness.

  Buck could feel his heart quicken a little. He looked over at Charlotte, who was wearing a wedding dress her mama had given her from her own trousseau; the dress was a bit snug in some places that Hannibal and Dave took secret pleasure in admiring.

  Buck said, “I best go out and meet that preacher.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Charlotte’s daddy said.

  And when they’d walked out to meet the preacher Hannibal said, “I’m sure enough sorry to see ’em get married.”

  “Why’s that?” Dirty Dave asked.

  “Charlotte was the best whore in Mister. I’m sure going to miss buying her.”

  “After we rob that fat bank in Dodge you can buy any whore you want.”

  Hannibal looked a bit forlorn.

  “Hand me that jug, would you?”

  Dave handed it to him and Hannibal took a nice swallow. “I know it,” he said, wiping his mouth with the cuff of his coat. “But they ain’t a one I could buy would be good as her in some ways.”

  “What sort of ways?” Dave asked curiously.

  Hannibal looked at him hard. “I reckon we ought to respect the fact it’s her wedding day. Maybe someday I’ll tell you, but that there’s my friend she’s marrying and it would be wrong to get into it, I reckon.”

  Dave took another swallow of the liquor and then Hannibal took another and said, “Listen, I start any fighting, bash me over the head with your pistol barrel will you?”

  The preacher rode in and dismounted and took his bible from his saddle pockets. He wore no hat, so his hair blew long and wild from his head like gray streamers. He was tall and gangly and when he wasn’t preaching he was the undertaker there in Mister and took in the dead and got them ready for their last long journey. His name was Haggard.

  “Boys, I just rode from Dreary, where I buried two little infant children dead of the influenza. And it’s been a long hard day for me already, so if you all don’t mind, let’s get this wedding under way, because I am about starved to the bone and dry as a nail for a taste of something wet.”

  Charlotte wept throughout the ceremony and Buck looked dazed. Some of the women wept too, and the men who weren’t related and one or two who were—somewhat distantly so—felt more than a few pangs of regret that the best whore in Mister was now getting married off. There were only two whores left in that little burg, and one had the consumption and the other was cross-eyed and hard to look at.

  It was a quick wedding and soon enough folks were seated around the tables grabbing fried chicken and cooked okra and boiled turnips and the like. T
hen it began to snow and there they all sat eating like there was no tomorrow and that Jesus might come anytime and call their number with the snow falling in their hair, and Dirty Dave thought, Goddamn, maybe it was a mistake or a bad sign or something, that snow, but nonetheless, the liquor was good and hard and by the time the snow had grown three, four inches deep, he didn’t notice it anymore.

  The preacher got drunk and they put him in the cellar with a few warm blankets and fed and watered his old mule. Buck of course went off with his bride to Mister to the one hotel, since there was little room in the house. Hannibal and Dirty Dave slept on the kitchen floor.

  They were lying there near the stove, the cherry glow of its fire upon their drunken faces.

  “What’s that?” Hannibal said, listening.

  “Sounds like a cat mewing off somewheres,” Dave said.

  “Like it’s got its paw caught in a trap or something.”

  “Yeah, sounds just like a hurt cat, don’t it?”

  They listened to the sounds and it spooked them some.

  Then Dirty Dave caught on to what it was making those sounds and began giggling like a schoolgirl and Hannibal said, “What the shit you giggling at?” and Dirty Dave said, “Don’t you get it, what’s making them sounds?”

  “No, but I’m by God about ready to get my boots on and ride to Mister just to get away from ’em.”

  “It’s…it’s…” Dirty Dave couldn’t hardly get the words out.

  “It’s what?”

  “It’s the old man in there with the mama,” Dirty Dave said.

  “Oh…” Then Hannibal started giggling too.

  “Goddamn, you believe old folks like that doing it?”

  “No…”

  Giggle, giggle.

  “Listen at ’em.”