Saving Masterson

by Bill Brooks

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Mine too.”

  “I guess I just need to find out now who it was hired ’em.”

  “I guess.”

  “I was on my way over to Angus Bush’s place when this broke out.”

  “Just heard, for your information, that Bone Butcher got out of the infirmary a while ago. You best keep an eye on him, he might be gunning for you, since you shot him in the foot.”

  “I doubt he wants any more of me, but if so he can have what he thinks he can handle.”

  “Just so’s you know,” Dog said.

  “I’ve been informed.”

  Dog Kelly still looked snake bit with sadness: He had a handful of silk flowers he had been taking to Dora’s grave when he heard the shooting.

  “Thought she might appreciate ’em,” Dog said almost self-consciously when he saw Teddy had taken notice of them.

  “I’m sure she will.”

  Teddy watched Dog go off toward the cemetery looking like a sad little man who would never find happiness again. He walked past the bloodstains in the street and kept going.

  Chapter 27

  Angus Bush stood behind the bar, the dim light long in the room as it fell through the narrow doors. The club was empty that time of day. Angus had a newspaper spread in front of him on the hardwood, a mug of coffee next to it. He looked up when Teddy walked in, then glanced again at his newspaper.

  “You got any more of that coffee?” Teddy said.

  “Sure.”

  Teddy waited until Angus poured him a cup.

  “I’m leaving town in a day or so,” Teddy said.

  Angus shrugged, said, “That supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Only if you remember my offer from when I first came in and want to take advantage of my services before I go.”

  Angus looked up.

  “What makes you think I need to hire a gun?”

  Teddy blew steam off the coffee. “Nothing makes me think it, I’m just offering if you have a need.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You sure?”

  Angus placed both beefy fists atop the newspaper. “I need anyone killed, I reckon I could do the job myself. But the fact is, I don’t need anybody killed. I’m a contented man. I got me a nice little business and I make a little bit of money at it and that’s enough. I saw enough killing in the war to last me a lifetime. That answer your question, mister?”

  “It does.”

  “I heard gunshots earlier, you know anything about that?”

  Teddy shook his head, said no. He felt no need to discuss it with Angus Bush.

  “Someday they’ll tame this town,” Bush said. It will be sweet music to my dear ears when they don’t hear another gunshot or cuss word. Don’t know why a man can’t just come into my place and buy himself a drink and play a little cards without all the other that tends to go with it. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” Teddy said.

  Angus nodded, went back to reading his newspaper.

  “How much for the coffee?” Teddy said.

  “It’s on the house, call it a farewell drink,” Angus said.

  Teddy knew he had eliminated one of the suspects.

  He felt drained but knew he had to go on. A lot had happened over the last twenty-four hours, none of it good. The only saving grace had been Mae. He remembered her saying how they needed to talk, that there was something she needed to tell him. He was prepared for the worst, that she had decided to leave Dodge, and that they would probably never see each other again.

  Well, disappointment seemed to come in spades in a town like Dodge, and he guessed he ought to be prepared for anything at this point. He swung by the infirmary on his way to see Mae to check on Ed Masterson.

  Ed was lying on a narrow bed with his leg bandaged and propped up on a pair of pillows. Bat sat next to the bed, shifting his derby in his fidgeting hands.

  “Looks like you might have saved me and Bat’s bacon, you coming along when you did,” Ed said. His brow was beaded with sweat. A wood burner stood in the corner; flames flickered behind the isinglass in the small door. The room was hot and stuffy, full of the odor of sickness and medicinal liniments.

  “Pure luck that I came along when I did,” Teddy said.

  “Maybe the coming-along part, but not the shooting part.”

  Bat interjected, “This feller is full of surprises, Brother Ed. Next thing we know, he’ll be performing rope tricks.”

  “I know it,” Ed said.

  Both brothers grinned. Teddy wasn’t sure if he should. “How’s the leg?”

  “Bullet went clean through. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m laying here instead of doing my rounds.”

  Teddy glanced toward the opposite end of the room, where Dirty Dave Rudabaugh lay, his eyes closed, his skin pasty. “What about him?”

  “Doc says he should up and die any minute, but he ain’t dead yet, and I got the worst feeling he ain’t going to either. Dirty Dave’s got the goddamnedest luck I ever seen a man have. Shot twice and he still ain’t dead.” Bat’s expression was one of chagrin.

  “I just spoke to Angus Bush. You can cross him off your list,” Teddy said.

  “How can you be sure?” Bat asked.

  “I’m sure.”

  Bat looked at Ed and Ed shrugged, said, “I reckon he’s been right on most things so far, I ain’t one to quarrel with him on this.”

  “Neither am I,” said Bat. “Consider Angus crossed off the list.”

  “Dog figures that leaves Bone Butcher.”

  “I don’t know how I’ll get it out of him, unless I beat it out of him,” Bat said. “Which is something I’m not opposed to doing.”

  “He might shake loose out of this town once he hears the men he hired failed their task,” Teddy said.

  “He might. And if he doesn’t, I’ll give him twenty-four hours to get out,” Bat said. “That is, if he doesn’t confess first. If he does, I might just put a bullet in him and save the county a trial.”

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  “Hell, I don’t see why not.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it then,” Teddy said. “I’ll stick around till you question Bone, but I reckon my work here is pretty much finished.”

  “I reckon so. Once word gets out that assassinations of the local law get you an early grave, it might stop others who think it’s a way to easy money.”

  “We can only hope,” Ed said.

  Ed held forth his hand. “Mr. Blue. I owe you. We both do.”

  “No. Let’s just call it even.”

  “How soon you heading out?” Bat said.

  “Day or two.”

  “Stop by the office before you go.”

  Teddy nodded, shook Ed’s hand. The hand felt warm, feverishly warm, but still with a good grip to it.

  “I’ll see you boys later.”

  The weather had cleared, but the streets were still muddy from the previous snowfall now melted away mostly. Sun sparkled in the puddles left behind, making them look like shattered glass lying in the street. The air was clean, and at least there wasn’t the smell of gunsmoke in it and that was something to be said.

  Teddy passed the undertaker’s. Both the newly dead men—Hannibal Smith and Buck Pierce—were propped up in the window, their arms and legs bound with wire and tied to boards. Hand-printed signs around their necks read: THE WAGES OF SIN. For added effect, the mortician had propped Hannibal’s empty shotgun in his arms. The dead men had sleepy expressions, like they were having bad dreams they couldn’t quite awaken from.

  Jesus Christ! Teddy thought.

  Teddy found Mae waiting for him at the Wright House. She was sitting at a table by herself.

  “Should we talk here, or go elsewhere?” he said.

  “Is the cab still available for rent?”

  “Sure. I’ll go get it.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  They went to the livery and rented
the cab and Mae said, “Let’s go to that spot where we had the picnic.” They sky had almost cleared completely of clouds and an unusually warm southerly wind blew gentle compared to the previous cold. Teddy popped the reins and set the horse into a trot, he felt anxious and wanted to get the talking started. Mae fell silent beside him, her eyes darting over the plains of withered grass.

  Soon enough they arrived at the spot where they’d gone the first time. Teddy helped her from the cab then ground-reined the horse. Mae stood facing into the wind, for several long moments her eyes closed.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Teddy said.

  She pursed her lips.

  “I had to kill a man today, possibly two if the other one dies.”

  He saw her face tighten.

  “It couldn’t be helped, they were going to assassinate the Mastersons. It just happened that I was there.”

  She opened her eyes and stared at him.

  “There’s something else, too. I’m a Pinkerton detective. It’s why I came here in the first place, to prevent the Mastersons from getting assassinated.”

  “I heard about the shooting,” she said. “I fretted that you’d been hurt. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I saw you come in.”

  He saw her lips tremble, thought it was over worry for him. He put his arms around her, said, “As you can see, I’m all right, Mae.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Can I ask you something first?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How does it make you feel, to have had to kill someone?”

  “Like hell,” he said. “Even though it couldn’t be helped, it doesn’t make me feel any better about it.” He didn’t want to tell her the rest of what he felt, the fact that the killing got easier. He didn’t know how to explain that part. How the first man he’d killed had left him feeling physically ill, but not the second nor the third. And while he didn’t like to think about taking another man’s life, he knew now he would not lose any sleep over it like he had the first one. It bothered him that he’d become that way more than the actual shootings.

  “How ironic,” she said, her voice fading with the wind. “Now there is something I have to tell you.”

  Teddy saw the serious look in her eyes, knew that whatever it was she was about to tell him couldn’t be good news.

  “Go ahead.”

  The winds shifted and suddenly she felt chilled and said, “Do you mind if we sit in the cab out of this?”

  He helped her step into the cab, then went around and took the reins and got in next to her.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t know quite where to begin,” she said. “Suffice it to say that you and I have a connection.”

  “I know that already.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand. The connection we have goes back several years.”

  “You’re right, I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not from Canada like I said. I wasn’t married to a man who brought me here.”

  The horse took a sudden step and the cab lurched forward and Teddy pulled back on the reins.

  “Say it plainly, Mae.”

  “It was my brother who killed your brother,” she said.

  At first the words didn’t want to register right. It seemed too impossible what she was telling him.

  “My name is Mae Carnahan,” she said. “My brother was Ludlow Carnahan.”

  Teddy felt stunned. “No,” he said.

  “Yes. It’s true. I wanted to tell you ever since we first met and you told me your name, but I couldn’t be sure that there was any connection—that your last name wasn’t simply a coincidence, so I sent some inquires back to Chicago and learned that you were really Horace’s brother.”

  He felt a knot in his chest.

  “And when it was confirmed who you were, I struggled whether to tell you at all who I was. I’d already begun to fall in love with you…and I didn’t want to lose you by admitting the awful truth.”

  “What is the truth, Mae? I mean, what the hell is the truth?”

  “I know you’re angry,” she said. “You’ve every right to be.”

  He climbed down from the cab. He had to breathe; it felt like he couldn’t. He walked off a distance, his mind full of confusion, regret, anger.

  She came after him.

  “Teddy, it was a horrible and tragic thing that happened to Horace and I don’t blame you if you hate me now for telling you the truth, but I came to realize that if I didn’t, we could never have anything real between us. I’m telling you now out of the same love that kept me from telling you sooner.”

  He turned on her, trying hard to keep his anger from spilling over.

  “Tell me why he did it!”

  “He did it for me.”

  “I don’t understand that sort of reasoning.”

  “Horace was in love with me, Lud found out. Lud was jealous and—”

  “It happened in a…”

  “I know where it happened,” she said. “I worked there. Horace was determined to take me out of that place, to make an honest woman of me. And I…I was prepared to let him.”

  “You said your brother was jealous of you…”

  “Yes, he loved me, in his own sick way he loved me in the way that any man loves a woman.”

  “And what about you?”

  “No. I could never do anything like that. It seemed to make Lud all the more insane with jealousy because I wouldn’t return his love. Maybe if I had, he might not have murdered Horace. I’ve asked myself over and over again if there was anything I could have done to have prevented it…”

  “My sources told me the woman’s name was Desiree Drake.”

  “It was the name I used to protect who I really was. Lud said it sounded more sophisticated, more like the name of a whore. But Mae is my real name and I took it back after Lud died.”

  “I still can’t believe any of this,” Teddy said. Then he remembered what else was in her file that George had shown him the day he recruited Teddy to be an operative for the Pinkertons: a strawberry birthmark in the shape of a star on her left hip—this Desiree Drake. He hadn’t seen such on Mae and said as much.

  “You’ve never seen me naked in the light,” she said.

  And now that he thought about it, he hadn’t.

  “Show me,” he said.

  She did. And when she did, it made it true and it brought the mystery and that chapter of his life to a close. And they stayed out there like that, talking the rest of the afternoon until the sun went down behind them and darkness crawled once more upon the land.

  And finally he said, “I don’t know what I’m feeling towards you, Mae. I don’t know what I should feel.”

  “I understand that you don’t,” she said. “Take me back and you think about it and when you’ve decided how you feel, come and tell me, either way. You owe me at least that much.”

  And he nodded and helped her into the cab and they drove back through the gloaming, the feeling of a knife twisting in his heart.

  Chapter 28

  Dusk descended like a cloud of fret. Two Bits had kept out of sight knowing that if the Mastersons spotted him they’d arrest him or he’d have to kill them, and he wasn’t about to kill them for free, when Bone Butcher was offering him a thousand dollars and maybe more, because Bone said there was another he wanted killed too.

  When the last light of day winked out and the lights of the saloons south of the deadline came on, Two Bits made his way up and down alleys until he came to the back door of the Silk Garter and entered unnoticed.

  He found Bone in his office, his shot foot propped atop a fancy footstool with a yellow silk pillow with fringes.

  “I come to seal the bargain,” Two Bits said.

  “’Bout time you come here, I thought you said you was leaving town by noon it we didn’t make some sort of an agreement.”

  “Things happened,” Two
Bits said. “Unexpected things not in my control that put the kibosh on my plans. But I’m here now and I’m ready to collect my money and see the job done.”

  “So I heard about them unexpected things. Word is you killed a lawman from New Mexico.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Who paid you to kill him?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You killed him for free?”

  “I guess you could look at it that way.”

  “Then I oughter get a discount on them Mastersons.”

  “I almost killed ’em free too, and I might kill you free if you don’t stick to the deal we had. Hell, I might kill everybody in this dang town—it ain’t the friendliest place I ever been.”

  Bone Butcher could see the impatience in the little feller’s eyes.

  “No, no, we still got us a deal. Thing is, I need me yet another feller killed on top of the three I already mentioned.” Bone was thinking hard about Frenchy stealing the Rose from him.

  “It don’t make no difference to me how many you want killed. Only question is, how much you willing to pay for all these extra fellers?”

  “I figure four fellers deserves a discount, don’t you?”

  Two Bits was down to lint in his pockets, having spent most everything he had on Mattie Silks and liquor. If he had been flush, he’d have told the foot-shot feller to kiss his mangy ass, that he wasn’t giving no discounts no how and no way. But as it stood, if he was ever going to take Elvira and go see the ocean, he’d need to earn as much quick cash as he could.

  “All right,” he said. “How much a discount?”

  “Say fifteen hundred for all four, ’at comes out to about eight hundred apiece.”

  Two Bits tried to tote the figure in his head knowing he had to divide one figure into the other, but the math eluded him as Bone Butcher knew that it would.

  “Done. But I need a down payment.”

  “Why?”

  Two Bits looked at him hard from under that big hat. “You take me for an idjit?”

  “Okay, how about a third now and the rest when it’s finished?”

  “How much would a third come to?”

  “Three hundred? A third is three, that’s why they call it a third.”

  “Then hand it over and tell me who them other two is you want shot.”