Chapter 1- San Francisco Here We Come

The summer heat had largely dissipated along with the hordes of drovers and the hangers on that come with them. Late August still brought hot days and drifters but mostly it was just the citizens of Dodge City and those men and women who live and work in surrounding Ford County who remained. It seemed as though almost all of them gathered at the railroad depot to bid farewell to three of the town's leading citizens, Marshal Matt Dillon, Doctor Galen Adams and Long Branch Saloon owner Miss Kitty Russell. The trio was headed to San Francisco.

Only Kitty had no official reason for the trip other than to return to a city she loved and to see her dear friend Julie Blane again. Doc shared the latter reason, but also anticipated attending an American Medical Association Conference comparing medical practice in rural areas to that in urban areas located west of the Mississippi. Dodge City's only doctor had been asked to participate as a speaker, not just a delegate. Since all his expenses were being paid and the Kansas AMA was providing a newly qualified fill-in doctor, Doc couldn't refuse. Matt had been ordered to attend a Practitioners and Enforcers of Western Law Conference to give a speech on the optimum role of peace officers in rural settings by his superiors in Washington. The Marshal's Service, like the AMA, was sending a temporary man to fill in while he was gone on this unwelcome assignment.

The Kansas AMA chapter was founded in 1859 four years after Doc had been sent to the not yet officially established Dodge City to pay back his mentor for his medical education by serving at Dr. Hodkin's behest as the sole doctor for hundreds of miles around for a year. That experience and his subsequent return immediately following the War in 1865 was why he'd been chosen to be the representative for the rural western half of the state. They had further recommended due to his reputation and long years of experience that he be one of the featured speakers at the beginning of September 1877. His fellow speakers included the head of Denver's General Hospital founded in 1860, a doctor serving the whites living in The Nations, and the current head of the medical school at the University of the Pacific in San Francisco.

Similar reasoning was behind Matt's selection as a featured speaker. Although the lawyers hadn't yet followed their physician counterparts and established a professional association, those who had such an organization in their sites, had arranged for the conference. He'd been serving as the US Marshal for Kansas with distinction since 1866 when he became the youngest man ever to be appointed. When they added that for nearly that entire time he'd also served as the City Marshal for Dodge City, where he'd chosen to make his home, he became an obvious choice as one of the speakers. Doc may have been nervous about making a speech, but Matt was down right against it. If he'd had his way, except for the chance to share a trip with Kitty, he would have chucked the whole thing.

His mood wasn't helped by nearly the entire town seeing them off, including a couple of strangers who would be filling in for the town physician and the marshal. Doc, who'd informed as many patients as he could about his temporary absence, seemed satisfied the young man the AMA had sent to temporarily take his place would do well despite his inexperience. Twenty-five year-old Michael Stafford had just received his license to practice medicine after serving under one of the two Wichita's doctors for three years. This followed two nine-month terms of medical school in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. Stafford chose to be a doctor because of his mother's death from cancer and his father succumbing to a heart attack. Since there was nothing left for him in Michigan after his required formal schooling, he followed his older brother west to Kansas in 1874 after being accepted to read medicine with Doctor Foyle, who elected not to attend the conference.

Matt wasn't as comfortable with Washington's choice to fill in while he was absent. Then again, he also wasn't ready to turn full authority over the illiterate and often irresponsible Festus Haggen with help from Sam Noonan. Sam was fully capable of being temporarily in charge of the town, but his first responsibility was to the Long Branch while Kitty was away. Washington's man Chub Brewster was a bit too trigger happy in Matt's opinion. There was some question in his mind as to whether or not it was simply a matter of taking the easier way out of a dangerous situation by simply firing before the lawbreakers could fire their own weapons. Matt wondered if his actions were always within the law as he saw it. He hoped Festus and Sam could keep him somewhat in line.

As the train began to pull out of the station, the big marshal resigned himself to the situation. He stretched out his long legs under the seat opposite where Doc sat next to the window across from Kitty and turned his head toward the woman sitting next to him and smiled that boyish grin he reserved only for her. She returned it with one of her own. He may have preferred wearing something other than the gray jacket, string tie and dark trousers that made up his traveling clothes, but he wouldn't have changed the traveling dress that his companion wore for anything. It only made her more beautiful in his eyes.

They'd be in Denver tomorrow, Wednesday where they would switch to the fancier train that would carry them on to San Francisco by Saturday evening. Both conferences would begin on Wednesday, August 29, 1877 at 8:00 AM with a light breakfast and continue, except for a break beginning Saturday at noon through Sunday to allow for sightseeing and church attendance. The AMA would resume Monday morning until Wednesday, September 5 at 6:00 PM followed by a closing reception while the law conference would end on Wednesday at 4:00. There would be an hour and a half break each full day starting at 11:30. Too bad the AMA conference would end three hours after the train for Denver departed. They'd arrived together and Matt intended that they should leave together despite having to spend an extra day in San Francisco due to the late finish of the AMA gathering. Besides Kitty would be pleased. The three companions would be on the train for at least three and a half days each way.

The two men and one woman rode comfortably together. They talked when they wanted, but also dozed off when they wanted. It was the kind of companionship that comes with years of close friendship or within a family.

Before long they were out of Kansas but the landscape hadn't changed much. It was still prairie and still eerily quiet except for the clacking of the train wheels on the rails, the hiss of the steam and the occasional blast of the whistle. It would be night before they left the foothills for the heart of the Rockies. Despite his misgivings, perhaps nothing would happen in his town, during the trip or after they arrived in San Francisco or during their returned home. Perhaps, Matt thought as he pulled his hat over his eyes, his speech would be a passing annoyance and the trip would be a much-needed vacation for him and Kitty and Dodge would be as they left it.