by Bill Brooks
In the dream, the long, forever dream that John was entering, he could see snow-capped mountains and a herd of wild mustangs racing across a ledge of land that was deep green with summer grasses. And between the horses and the mountains, he could see a large blue lake that looked like glass with the sun sparkling in it.
He reached out to touch the places he saw, to stroke the manes of the horses. Then he saw the woman coming toward him—the one he’d loved so desperately in Las Vegas and had killed. She had her arms outstretched, calling to him, Come John…
He looked back over his shoulder and he didn’t like what he saw as much as what lay ahead of him and so he didn’t turn back but kept walking toward the woman, the mountains, the wild horses, the blue lake.
“That’s it,” the priest said. “It is finished, he is no more.” He closed John’s eyes, knowing they had seen things that only the dead have seen in those last moments of their living.
The villagers crossed themselves and slunk away into the night, all except for a few women who said that they would wash the body and prepare the gringo for burial.
Selena had written something on a piece of paper that she handed to the priest:
What about Chico?
The priest shook his head. “I will find him,” he said.
Selena made a motion with her hands.
“He did what he thought was the right thing to do, to protect us,” the priest said. “Now we must protect him.”
The woman made a sign with her hands that she was sorry.
The priest said, “I should be asking forgiveness from you,” and took her and held her, knowing that some of the tears she wept were for the gringo and some for the boy and some for their love that had gone astray.
And all night the priest prayed for forgiveness and when morning fell again on the village he removed the crucifix he wore and placed it beside his bible, then woke the woman and said, “It’s time to go,” then went and woke the boy and told him the same thing.
Chapter 30
Bat was crossing the street to reach the Dodge House when he heard gunshots, then glass shattering. He looked up and saw two men falling from the sky.
Teddy had delivered Mae to her boarding house.
“You will promise to let me know what your feelings are before you leave Dodge?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
He could tell that she wanted him to kiss her good night, and he wanted to kiss her good night but did not. He waited until she entered the house then drove the cab down to the livery and turned it in and walked back to his hotel.
The desk clerk stopped him and handed him a telegram.
“It arrived for you this afternoon,” the clerk said.
Teddy put it in his pocket. He felt weary and only wanted a quiet room and a bed.
He climbed the stairs feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Once inside the room, he struck a match to the lamp’s wick and adjusted the flame to low. Then he turned and saw the man there in front of the window holding the pistol.
“Yeah, you’re him,” the man said.
“I’m who, and what the hell are you doing here?”
“You’re the feller named Blue and I’m here to kill you.”
“Kill me why?”
“Cause I’m getting paid to, that simple enough for you? You want, you can close your eyes. It wouldn’t be no shame in it if you was to, lots of men have.”
“Who’s paying you to kill me?”
The man grunted. “I guess it don’t matter you was to know it’s Bone Butcher. He’s mighty pissed you shot his toes off. You gone close your eyes or you want to see it coming?”
Teddy knew there was no way he could pull the Lightning and fire before the man shot him, but he wasn’t about to go down without fighting.
His hand snaked inside his coat.
The man said, “Fine, you son of a bitch,” and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. They both knew the hammer fell on a dud and Teddy knew he had less than a split second to make his move.
He charged the man and knocked his arm aside just as he pulled the trigger a second time. The pistol discharged and the bullet slammed through the floor, striking the desk clerk in the wrist.
Teddy had the man’s shooting hand in a death grip, but before he could wrest the gun from him, the man fired again. This time, the bullet ripped through Teddy’s coat.
With a lunge, he and the man crashed through the window and for a full moment they were falling free. Then they slammed against the porch overhang and lost their grip on one another, Teddy falling away from the man before hitting the ground.
He realized he still had the man’s gun he’d wrested free, but it felt of little consequence as he struggled to regain his breath. The man lay several feet away.
Bat ran up, bent over Teddy and turned him over, then saw who one of the men was that’d fallen from the sky. “Blue!”
Teddy couldn’t quite get the warning words out as he saw the other man rise to his knees behind Bat and draw a second revolver from his boot, cock and aim it. Teddy fired from where he lay, through Bat’s spraddled legs, and saw the bullet knock the man backwards.
Bat stood stunned for a pure instant, not realizing exactly what was going on, then turned slightly, enough to see the dead gunman.
“What the hell—”
“Bone Butcher sent him,” Teddy gasped.
Bat went nearer and examined the man’s face.
“It’s the son of a bitch who shot Hoodoo Brown,” Bat said. “Name’s Two Bits Cline. And I’m guessing he’s the one who shot Frenchy LeBreck and the Rose too, her dead as him.”
“Frenchy’s dead?” Teddy said.
“As you can get,” Bat said. “I found them just a while ago in Frenchy’s place, was coming to warn you there might be another shooter.”
Teddy thought, At least Frenchy died with the woman he loved, sad as that fact seemed.
Bat helped Teddy to his feet.
“What do you say we go finish this?” Teddy said.
“My sentiments exactly.”
Bone was in his office, his bad foot resting still on the fancy pillow, a glass of top-shelf bourbon near his one hand, the little silver-plated pistol near his right. He heard footsteps approaching, figured it was Two Bits coming to collect his money. A smile creased his face.
Come on and get your reward, he thought, reaching for the pistol.
Only when the door opened and Bone fired, it wasn’t Two Bits Cline he shot, but rather Bat’s new derby, before Bat shot Bone through the forehead. It was a brief and unhappy surprise for Bone to see Bat Masterson and that feller who’d shot off his toes. And unhappier still to see Bat’s pistol spit fire.
It was a clean accurate shot without compare.
Bat retrieved his derby, examined the hole in it.
“Cost me five dollars,” he said.
Teddy saw the open safe, the stacks of money in it.
“I reckon the state wouldn’t mind if Bone was to reimburse you for the hat.”
“I reckon not.”
“I think it’s over,” Teddy said.
“I think it’s over too.”
Teddy offered Bat his hand, and Bat shook it.
“I was all wrong about you,” Bat said. “You’re a damn good man and I’m damn glad you came to Dodge.”
“I’ll be leaving in the morning.”
“You taking the flier?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll come down and see you off.”
“No need.”
“I’d like to anyway.”
Teddy glanced at the late Bone Butcher, saw that one of the soles of his shoes had a hole worn through it, saw again the money there in the safe and wondered why a man with so much would let his shoes get worn down. Well, it wouldn’t matter now why; some men were just strange in their behavior. Bone would see the woman he supposedly loved dead rather than happy and he’d rather wear shoes with holes in them than
pay to have them fixed. Such were the men that came to Dodge, Teddy reasoned. But then too, there were the Mastersons and Dog Kelly—men who cared to tame a wild town and make it better for everyone.
“See you around,” Teddy said and walked out into the hard black night.
He started back to his hotel, then changed his mind and went to the boarding house where Mae stayed.
He asked the woman running the place for her room and the woman bid him wait in the parlor while she fetched Mae, citing the fact it was unseemly for a female boarder to have male visitors after dark alone in their rooms.
Teddy waited and in a few minutes Mae appeared.
She seemed surprised to see him, but relieved too.
“What is it?” she said.
“Something happened tonight,” he said. “It made me think.”
She waited for him to say what it was.
“I’ve come to realize how quickly our lives can be changed by a single act, something we don’t expect to happen. I think that’s how it was for you when Horace was killed, and I understand now that you had no hand in his death; it was just something that happened. And I can’t blame you for the actions of your brother. I’ve come to care a great deal about you, Mae. I don’t want us to part feeling badly toward each other. But more importantly, I don’t want you to think I hold any animosity toward you. In fact, the truth of how I feel is just the opposite.”
She came closer to him.
“I have to go away and take care of some things,” he said. “I’ll leave you my address in Chicago and if you leave Dodge before you hear from me, contact me there and I’ll find you.”
“Does this mean you think there is a real chance for us, Teddy?”
“I think there could be.”
Her eyes welled with tears.
“I love you,” she said.
“And I you.”
“Kiss me before you go?”
He felt a sweet sadness for her as he kissed her and he felt the same sweet sadness the next day as he waited for the flier to pull into the station.
Bat was there and so was Ed, leaning on a pair of crutches, and so was Dog Kelly, looking tired with red eyes.
“Hell of a job, young man,” Dog said patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll send along word to your boss what grand work you performed here.”
“No need,” Teddy said. “Generally if any of his operatives come back alive, George is pleased.”
“You ever want to leave the Pinkertons and come west again,” Ed said, “I could use me a good deputy.”
“Same here,” Bat said.
“You boys look to me like you got it all covered,” Teddy said.
“Well, not quite all,” Bat said.
Ed looked sheepish.
“How so?” Teddy said.
“That damn Dirty Dave Rudabaugh somehow managed to live and has escaped from the infirmary and we can’t find him anyplace.”
Dog leaned and spat and said, “Shit, I reckon he can’t be killed or caught, he’s got more lives than a cat.”
“Oh, we’ll catch him,” Bat said. “Or somebody will.”
They all laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation.
It was starting to snow.
“Winter looks like it’s finally here to stay,” Dog said.
Teddy shook their hands and boarded the train.
He fought the urge to go and find Mae and take her with him. He fought the urge to stay and maybe make a life for himself here in Dodge, the Bibulous Babylon of the plains.
And when the train at last pulled out and he waved his last good-bye and watched as the train’s shadow rode over the endless prairies, he thought he could see in the great distance a man riding a horse. A man who looked like maybe he wasn’t feeling so good but riding hellbent anyway—riding hard away from Dodge.
Then he remembered the telegram and pulled it from his pocket and saw that it was from Juarez.
About the Author
BILL BROOKS is an author of twelve novels of historical and frontier fiction. He lives in North Carolina.
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Also by Bill Brooks
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LAW FOR HIRE: SAVING MASTERSON. Copyright © 2004 by Bill Brooks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition August 2007 ISBN 9780061748271
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