CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Early the next morning I rode out to Ma Schnieder’s place. I
left Chester in the office, with instructions to cut Rance loose when he woke
up. I was pretty sure there’d be no more trouble from the Drag-R herd. At least
not this year. And maybe word would get out that Dodge wasn’t a lawless town.
Maybe the other herd-drivers would hear and stick to cards and booze and girls.
Maybe there wouldn’t be any more shooting. I was sick of it. I knew the town
only thought of me as a gunman with a chip on his shoulder. Well, maybe they
were right. But maybe that wasn’t all there was to me. In fact, that’s why I
was riding out to Ma Schnieder’s place. I had a few questions to ask her.
And it was an excuse to see Kitty, away from the town.
It bothered me a little that I thought I needed an excuse to
see her. It bothered me a lot that I worried what the townsfolk would say –
those chatty little birdlike women and their stuffy balding husbands. It
bothered me even more that I wanted them to think well of me as a person, as
well as a lawman. I knew it was wrong. I knew there that nothing good came of
wanting to be liked. So I decided then and there to ride back into Dodge with
Kitty beside me, and take her out to breakfast at the Dodge House. That’d show
them.
Of course, then I got to thinking that if I was doing it to
show them, it was still wrong. I just couldn’t win an argument with someone as
stubborn as myself.
As I rode I shrugged my left shoulder around a few times. It
was still sore, and the bandage I’d put on this morning was a little tight. But
I’d taken Doc seriously about infection – in the army I’d seen men lose limbs
from wounds less serious than the graze from Howard’s bullet. It wasn’t hurting
much, just ached some. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.
I came up to Ma Schnieder’s place just as the sun was
clearing the horizon. Already the hands were out, hard at work. One of them
spotted me and yelled to the others. Their heads turned, and I waved once. One
of them recognized me, and they all started to converge on the house, just in
case there was trouble.
Ma Schnieder must’ve heard the yell, or else she’d seen me
coming, because she was standing on her front porch when I got there. Her
grand-daughter was there with her, and so was Kitty. I noticed that Mrs.
Schnieder wasn’t holding her shotgun, but it was within reach. A cautious
woman, Ma Schnieder.
“Mornin’, Marshal,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Morning, ma’am,” I said, nodding to her, then to Kitty and
the grand-daughter. “Ladies.”
“Ladies?” asked Kitty. The grand-daughter giggled.
Ma Schnieder half-turned her head. “An’ why not, ladies?
What, ain’cha lady-like? What, do you carry a six-gun and get drunk and fight
like ever’ fool man in this world?”
Kitty smiled, but the grand-daughter looked down at the
ground and said, “No, ma’am.”
“That’s right,” said Ma Schnieder. “What’re you here for,
Marshal? Is there trouble?”
“No, Mrs. Schnieder,” I said. “No trouble. Just wanted to
check in on you and your guest.”
Mrs. Schnieder looked at her son and the hired hands. “Well,
you heard the man. There’s no trouble, so git back t’work, you lazy fools,
a’fore I find whichever one a’ya hid my whip!”
The men scattered, some of them smiling, some of them
terrified. Her son was one of the latter.
“Well, come in, Marshal,” said Ma Schnieder. “There’s coffee
on the stove, and I expect I c’n find some eggs from somewhere.”
I dismounted and hobbled my horse on the front rail of the
porch. Kitty just stood there grinning at me, and I was smiling, too. The
grand-daughter looked back and forth between us, and her own smile grew from
looking at ours.
“How’s the town, Matt?”
“It’s fine, Kitty.”
“You go after Rance?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re not hurt?”
“Nobody got hurt, much,” I told her. “Rance’ll be free later
today.”
“Is that safe?”
“Should be. Even if he wants to make trouble, his boys won’t
let him.”
From inside Ma Schnieder shouted, “Are you comin’ in,
Marshal? Or should I jus’ put’cher food in the pig trough!”
“We’d better go in,” said Kitty, laughing.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’d better.”
Inside it smelled like woodsmoke and bacon and coffee. It was
a collection of smells that made a man feel at home wherever he was. I took off
my hat and sat down to breakfast with the three women. They asked me more about
the trouble last night, and the business out at Howard’s ranch. I gave them
decent-sized answers, knowing how hungry ranchers always are for news. I knew
they’d eventually get around to the subject I’d come for.
It was Mrs. Schnieder herself who brought it up. “And that
poor Francie. Is it true that the Dutchman killed her husband?”
“It looks that way,” I said.
“Will he hang?” asked the grand-daughter.
I sipped some coffee. “I doubt it.”
“Should be given a medal,” said the old lady sourly.
“Oh?” I said.
“Now, Marshal,” said Ma Schnieder, putting her hands on her
hips. “Don’t sit there eatin’ my food and drinkin’ my coffee and tell me you
didn’t know what was goin’ on in that house!”
“I knew,” I said. “I even had a talk with Clay about it. But
unless she wanted to press charges, there was nothing else I could do.”
Ma Schnieder shook her head. “An’ that’s the problem wit’the
law.” She said the last word with scorn.
“Law’s a good thing, Ma,” said Kitty.
“Now, don’t you go defendin’ ‘im, Kitty,” said Schnieder,
shaking a spoon at Kitty.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m defending the law. I don’t think
the Marshal needs defending from anything except more of this coffee.”
I cringed for a moment before I heard the old woman’s cackle
and realized she was laughing. She patted Kitty on the shoulder and went back
to her stove.
“Say, Mrs. Schnieder,” I began.
“Call me Ma, Marshal,” she said. “Ever’body else does.”
“Okay, Ma,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “Did Francie ever
come out this way?”
“Sure,” said Mrs. Schnieder, “whenever he got to beatin’ her
too hard. She was here last week, as a matter a’fact. Just before he tried to
rob that bank.”
I looked up. “He hit her last week?” I asked. “When?”
“Oh, the night before the stick-up, I guess. She spent the
night here, then went back to Dodge to find the whole city lookin’ for her
husband.”
I remembered Francie saying something about not knowing where
her husband had been the night before the robbery, but I’d thought at the time
that she’d been home, and he’d been out. “I saw her,” I said. “She didn’t look
beat up.”
Ma Schnieder looked at me. “You think a black eye is the only
way a man has of beatin’ on his wife, Marshal?” she asked me darkly.
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
“No,” she said, agreeing. She brought over some more bacon
and laid it on my plate. Neither Kitty nor Schnieder’s grand-daughter were
eating. They were just watching and listening, the girl fascintated, Kitty with
a keen look in her eye.
“How’d he hit her, then?” I asked.
“He didn’t hit her, Marshal,” said Schnieder.
“What then?”
“He kicked her. Kicked her in the belly.”
I felt sick. “Why on earth would he do a thing like that?”
Ma Schnieder turned away from her eggs to look me in the eye.
“To kill her baby, Marshal.”
