In Vino Veritas

(A Missing Moment for "The Round-Up")

Front Street was dark. Empty. Silent. No rowdy cowboys firing guns into the crisp night air, no tinny "Camp Town Races" resonating from the many saloons that dotted the main street of the little cow town. From one of the wooden chairs in front of the Long Branch Saloon, Kitty Russell watched the behemoth of a lawman walk down the boardwalk toward the jail, long rifle in his hand, Colt holstered on his hip, eyes straight ahead, his expression as dark as the night itself, as unyielding as the boards beneath his boots.

"G'night, Matt." Kitty's soft voice spoke from the shadows.

He spun toward the sound. "Kitty. I, uh, I didn't see you sitting there."

"Appears to me you're not seeing much of anything. You look beat. Come on in, I'll buy you a drink." She paused and looked up at him before continuing. "I shouldn't be doing this, of course. You may have heard that the marshal closed down all the bars in this town."

"Kitty, I…about the way I talked to you earlier…I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that. You didn't do anything wrong."

"No, I didn't, Matt, and neither did Sam or Bill or any of the girls. We were having a good night, a very good night, and…well, frankly, we lost a lot of money because of you." She waited for him to respond. When he didn't she added, "But that's water under the bridge now." She gave him a friendly smile and inclined her head in the direction of the batwing doors. "C'mon."

Once inside, Kitty moved behind the bar and filled two shot glasses with whiskey. She handed one to the lawman and stood twisting the other in small circles on the bar's scarred surface. "I heard what happened, Matt. I truly am sorry. You want to talk about it?"

He stared past her, downing the drink in a single swallow. The silence that followed was so long she determined that he did not want to talk about it—or about anything. Finally, in a voice flat and low he spoke. "I didn't even know who he was, Kitty. I was so blinded by rage I couldn't see him."

She pushed the other glass forward with a well-manicured index finger. "I know how you feel, Matt, but Zel knew the risk when he put on that badge."

"Yeah, he knew the risk all right, but he sure as hell wasn't expecting it to come from me." He swallowed the second drink as quickly as the first.

"Looks like you took some risk yourself. Is that blood on your sleeve?"

He glanced down at his left arm. "Uh, yeah, I guess so."

"You guess so? Don't you know what happened?"

He shrugged. "Not really. Musta got hit in the gunfire in the saloon." Once again he stared beyond her, unseeing. "I didn't even feel it."

She reached beneath the counter and pulled out a fresh bottle of the Long Branch's best rye whiskey. She handed it to him along with two clean glasses. "Take these and go up to my room. I'll get Doc right away."

He shook his head. "No need. Doc dogged me down at the jail until I let him look at it just to shut him up. It's just a graze. Doc cleaned and bandaged it for me. It's fine, Kitty."

She noted that he said, "It's fine," not "I'm fine." It was going to be a long night. "Still, go on upstairs. I'll be up as soon as I put the ledgers away and straighten up a bit down here."

He climbed the stairs, pausing at the top. "Number six?"

"Yeah. It's unlocked." As she spoke she remembered she had left the small bedroom festooned in an array of feathers and sequins and satin as she dressed for her evening shift downstairs. "Just ignore the mess and make yourself comfortable," she called up to him.

Kitty's sapphire blue eyes followed Matt Dillon's large form as he crossed the balcony and opened the door to room number six. A woman could fall in love with a man like that, she thought to herself. Sighing, she crossed the bar room floor to secure both the outside double doors and the batwing doors. Re-crossing the room, she washed and dried the shot glasses and swiped a damp cloth across the bar before picking up the cash box and the big black account book and carrying them into the office. Once there she carefully counted the cash one more time, reconciling the amount with the neat figures she had entered into the ledger at the premature close of the evening's business.

When she opened the door to her room nearly thirty minutes later, she found the U. S. Marshal, eyes closed, stretched full length on her bed, boots beneath it, gun belt dangling from the warped wooden headboard, vest draped across the foot of the bed, and the massive Stetson perched atop the dress mannequin in the corner.

"Matt?"

The blue eyes opened, and an almost grin twitched the corners of his mouth. "I couldn't find a seat. The chairs are full of…stuff...and you told me to make myself comfortable."

"That I did, Marshal, that I did." She lifted the whiskey bottle from the floor beside the bed, noting that it was considerably less full than when she had handed it to him downstairs. "You feeling better?"

"No." He closed his eyes again, as if to shut out the memory of what had happened earlier.

0o0o0o0o0

"How did you come to know Zel? He seemed a good bit older than you." Kitty emerged from behind the dressing screen, the question forming on her lips as she climbed onto the bottom of the bed. She folded her legs beneath her and spread the full skirt of her nightgown around her. With its high neck and long sleeves, it was much less revealing than many of the outfits she wore downstairs in the saloon.

Matt opened his eyes briefly, but closed them again without any acknowledgment of the nightgown clad woman perched on the foot of the bed. "Ran into him down in Alamogordo a lotta years ago. I was ridin' with a kinda wild crowd. We never did anything that was against the law—not really—but we came mighty close a couple times." He chuckled as if remembering. "For some reason, Zel seemed to take a liking to me and tried to keep me on the straight and narrow. Not sure why, since he was known to work on the shady side of legal more than a few times himself." He lapsed into silence and then, "Damn! I swear I never even saw him in that saloon, Kitty."

"I believe you, Matt. It's a tragedy, but it was an accident, pure and simple. And you need to believe that, too." She stretched out her arm and asked, "You mind sharing my whiskey with me?"

"'Course not," he grinned, "help yourself." He handed over the bottle and one of the shot glasses.

She filled the little glass and handed the bottle back to him, watching as he downed yet another swig of the very smooth Old Overholt. Holding the glass in her hand, she braced her back against the bedpost and settled into a more comfortable position asking, "So how did that life lead to your becoming a lawman?"

His shoulders moved in what might have been a shrug. "The west had growing pains. It needed taming and men to tame it. I needed a job. I wasn't of age yet, but I was big, strong. I was pretty good with a gun and not too bad with my fists. Thought I was good with a knife, too," he snorted, "but I have a scar on my stomach that says otherwise." He slid his hand across a spot just above his pelvic bone and wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Maybe I'll let you see it sometime." He paused and then added, "And another thing—I could read and write, so that made 'em want me in spite of my age." He took yet another swallow of the amber liquid. "Peacekeepers, they called us. Bull crap!" His eyes closed again and he was quiet for so long that she thought he had fallen asleep, but he finally broke the silence by bolting upright and fumbling for his boots. "I should get out of here, Kitty."

"Matt, I'm not so sure you…" Kitty's words trailed into silence as she watched him take three steps and stumble against the dresser. She rounded the bottom of the bed and touched his arm. "I think you better stay here tonight."

"Here?" He looked around the frilly, feminine room.

"Yes, right here. That whiskey hit you, and I don't think it's a good idea for the townspeople to see their marshal staggering around in the dark. Just take your boots off and lie down again—under the covers this time."

"I'm not so very drunk, Kitty."

"You're not so very sober, either. I work in a saloon, remember? I know about these things."

Even as he continued, his words began to slur. "'Sides, no one's on the streets tonight. Marshal closed down the town—'member?" He looked at her skeptically. "You sure you wanna put up with me tonight?"

"I'll chance it," she answered dryly.

"But this is your bed. Where'll you sleep?"

"Right over there on the chaise. I'll be fine. Now climb in."

Without argument, he did as instructed and settled his long body back onto the too-short bed, pulling the flowered quilt up to his chest. When he spoke again, it was a vehement, "I hate it, Kitty. I hate this damned job!"

An excess of whiskey in a very short period of time had apparently loosened the tongue of the taciturn lawman, and he began to talk, revealing details of his life he had never before shared with anyone. He told her how much he hated fighting and killing, how much it repulsed him. "I've been killing men for a living since I was seventeen. Oh, it's always been honest work and on the right side of the law, but it was killing just the same. During the war the army called it 'preserving the Union,' and here in the west they call it 'keeping the peace.' But no matter the name or justification, it's killing just the same, and I detest it."

Another long silence, as if perhaps contemplating how much he wanted to tell her. When he finally spoke again, it was a very quiet, "Taking a life doesn't make me feel like a man, Kitty. It makes me feel sick, physically sick. And the first couple a times I was—holstered my gun and turned around and puked in the gutter on the main street of Coffeyville. Happened again in Yuma. San Antonio, too. Probably a dozen other towns I don't even remember." He let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "Yeah, I've spilled my guts in plenty a places."

"Why do you keep doing this job, Matt? If you hate it so much and it takes so much out of you?"

He tossed his head from side to side on the pillow. "I quit this job once—you know that—and I quit others before it, but it's like there's something inside of me that keeps pulling me back—back to the law, to justice—to what's right." He opened his eyes. "I guess that's your answer, Kitty. Much as I hate the fighting and the killing, I love right and justice even more. It's like it's in my blood. And there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it." He closed his eyes again for a moment, then opened them, the flickering candlelight illuminating his pain. He looked directly at her. "I've never told that to anyone before. But, for some reason, it's important to me that you to know the whole truth." And with that he turned onto his side, pulling the covers up over his shoulder. "I'm gonna go to sleep now."

Stunned by his very personal disclosure, Kitty cleared dresses and boas and shawls from the chaise, adding them to the pile already gracing the room's only chair. She carefully scrubbed the evening's paint from her face and applied a brush to her hair for the requisite hundred strokes. She took a blanket from the bottom drawer of the dresser and quietly approached the bed to retrieve the pillow Matt wasn't using. She smiled down at the sleeping lawman. Oh, how tempted she was to curl up against that broad back, wrap her arms around him and comfort him. She sighed. One of these days….

0o0o0o0o0

"Kitty!" The sound of her name startled her out of a deep sleep. She hadn't been dreaming. A warm male body was pressed close against her side, a muscled arm draped across her back. She watched surreptitiously through long lashes as the lawman rolled away, sitting upright in the bed for a moment and then flopping onto his back, one shirt-sleeved arm flung against his forehead. "Damn," he whispered. She stifled a giggle when she saw him lift his head and scan his eyes down the long length of his body, taking note of the still-buttoned pants and tightly clasped silver belt buckle.

"'Mornin' Matt. Head not feelin' so good?"

"What are you doing here, Kitty?"

"I was sleeping, 'til you so abruptly woke me up."

"No, I mean what are you doing in the bed? You said you were going to sleep over there on the ch..." He gestured toward the chaise on the other side of the room. "On that chair thing."

"And I did. For a while. But it's not very comfortable, and I was cold. I had a perfectly good bed across the room, so I decided to use it. "

"But I was already using it," he argued.

"And you didn't leave me much space, but I managed to wedge myself in without falling off the edge."

"You shouldn't have done that, Kitty."

"Why not? Is there a law in Dodge that says a girl's not allowed to sleep in her own bed?"

For the first time he turned and looked at her. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course not. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't be sleep…well, we shouldn't be in bed together." He grasped the back of his head and emitted another "Damn!" Looking chagrined he stammered, "Did I…did we…did anything happen here?"

She grinned at his discomfiture. "That's not exactly flattering, but you can relax, Matt. Nothing happened. Your marshal's virtue is still intact."

He shook his head. "It's not that. It's…." He stopped and began again. "Listen, Kitty, I'm obliged to you for putting up with me and keeping me from embarrassing myself in public." He was sitting on the edge of the bed, struggling into his boots. "I should probably take you to breakfast or something, but I really do need to get out of here this time. Chester and I have a burial to take care of and then I have some business with the commandant out at Fort Dodge."

"You sure you're up to that? You did drink an entire bottle of Old Overholt last night."

He nodded. "I'm okay. Head hurts some, but the air should clear it." By now he was standing upright, strapping the gun belt around his narrow hips. He walked across the room to pick up his hat. "I'll be back tonight. If you're not…uh…busy, could I…well, could I take you to supper?"

"I'd like that," she smiled, already mentally rifling through her armoire in search of the perfect dress to wear.

He started toward the door. "I have no idea how long it'll take me out at the fort. Master Sergeant Harvey Wentz isn't known for his skill with paper work, so I'm not sure what I'll find."

"No worries, Matt. I'll wait for you."

He nodded. "Thanks again, Kitty."

As he placed his hand on the doorknob, she moved close and intimately touched her fingers to the front of his shirt. "Ummm, Matt, after supper do you think you might show me that knife scar?"

This time his blue eyes twinkled, and a full grin stretched across his handsome face. "Count on it, Kitty. Count on it."

The End