CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A half hour later I was walking back to my rooms to change
clothes before heading to the Texas Trail when Doc saw me and cornered me. “You
going to let me take a look at you?” he asked. “Or do you want to go on
bleeding?”
“Doc, I’d rather bleed to death, if I didn’t know you’d get a
fee for my body.”
He laughed. “Come along,
then, Matt. I’ll sew you up. Who knows, with a new shirt and the miracle of my
medicine, you might even look human again.” His wicked old eyes gleamed at me.
“Or maybe you were hoping Kitty could doctor you.”
I sighed. “Lead the way, you old buzzard.”
A buggy came riding down Front street. Perched on the seat
was a pretty homely looking woman in her working clothes. She wore a pretty
decent bonnet, but she had an apron over her dress and looked like she’d just
come from a barn. She stopped the buggy and looked down at Doc. “Can you direct
me to the Marshal’s office?” She pretty well ignored me.
Doc smiled at her and pointed. “Yes, ma’am, right there, on
the corner.”
I shot Doc a dark look. “Can I help you, ma’am?” I said. “I’m
Marshal Dillon.”
She looked me up and down like I’d made a mess in her
kitchen. I suppose I wasn’t much to look at just then. She said, “I left home
as soon as I got your telegram. Where’s my boy?”
“Oh!” I said, smiling. “We have him, ma’am, safe and sound.
Here, let me help you down.” I reached up a hand. She looked at it dubiously,
then thanked me and stepped down. I hitched the horse to a rail, buggy and all,
and led her towards the jail. It was the last place I’d seen him, and I figured
he’d be waiting there to tell me again how I should have just shot Stobo and
had done with it.
“Right this way, ma’am,” I said, opening the door to the
office. She followed me in, with Doc trailing behind.
The kid’s mother seemed to thaw a little to me when she saw
that I really was who I said I was. “I’m sorry he put you to all that trouble,
Marshal,” she said. “Truth of the matter is, he’s a wild one, and no mistake.
Takes after his father, one scrape after another.”
“He was no trouble at all,” I said. “I like children fine –
like to have ‘em around. And he was fine – not a mite of trouble. Isn’t that
right, Doc.”
Doc smiled at her, his best undertaker’s grin. “Oh, yes, a
real angel, that’s your boy.”
“Bub?” I called. “Bub, your ma’s here. Son?”
Just then Shiloh came walking in to the office. “You lookin’
for the kid, Marshal?”
“Yeah, Shiloh. This is his mother, come to take him back.
Ma’am, this is Shiloh – he’s been looking after your boy the past couple days.”
The woman nodded. “Thank you, mister.”
“Shiloh,” I said, “is the kid over at the Dodge House?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you, Marshal. Have you seen
him?”
“No – I thought he’d either be here, or with you.”
“Well, I left him here after that ruckass earlier – I figured
he’d rather be with you for the day.”
“Yeah,” I said, walking into the back room, past the cells.
The back door was open.
“He gone, Marshal?” asked Shiloh.
“Looks that way,” I said.
The woman said, “He seen me and he high-tailed it, the
devil.”
I chuckled.
“We’ll round him up for you, ma’am, don’t worry.” I pulled out a chair for her,
and she sat down heavily.
“Oh, I don’t know why I bother hauling him back,” she said.
“If he’s run away once he’s run away a thousand times. This time he ran ‘cause
I wouldn’t buy him a gun. He wanted a real one. That boy’s just gun crazy, I
swear. I got him a nice Bowie knife instead.”
Doc looked over at me, his eyes wide. They weren’t full of
laughter anymore.
“Bowie knife?” I said, my stomach sinking.
The woman nodded. “I reckon it wouldn’t signify, and off he
run.”
“Bowie knife?” asked Shiloh. Between Doc’s expression and my
voice, we’d tipped him off that something was wrong.
“Shiloh,” I said grimly, “find that kid.”
The mother looked up at me, her face real worried. “Marshal?
Has he done somethin’ bad with it? I told him to use it careful. He promised to
use it careful!”
That was when we heard the hoofbeats outside. They weren’t
the slow pace of a casual rider. It was someone getting out of Dodge as fast as
a horse could carry him.
Shiloh was over at the door and he saw the rider. I saw him
too, from the window. It was the kid.
Shiloh bolted through the door, then looked back at me.
“Marshal!”
“Nevermind, Shiloh,” I said. “He’s got Clay Richard’s
strawberry roan. He’s a lot lighter than we are. Even if I was in any shape to
chase him, we’d never catch up. He’s gone.”
The mother was still talking, more to herself than to us. “I
try to bring him up right, I tell him to be good, but he don’t listen! He just
don’t listen!”
“Now
calm yourself, ma’am,” I said, “just calm yourself. Doc,” I said, tossing him
my keys. “Open my desk drawer and look inside, will you? Chester locked the
kid’s little bundle in there. I want to have a look at it.”
Doc unlocked the drawer and pulled out a little bundle,
roughly tied with twine. “Here it is,” he said, handing it over.
It was pretty heavy. I felt sick. “Here,” I said, passing it
back to him. “You’re better at knots than I am. Open it, will you?”
The woman just kept on talking. “Since the moment he was born
he’s been nothing but tribulation to me.”
“Now, please, ma’am,” I said, patting her arm. “What’s he got
in there, Doc?”
“Shirt, stockings, piece o’ sausage. An’ this.” Doc pulled
out a pistol.
“44 double-action,” I said.
“Why, so it is. Does that mean something, Matt?”
“Yeah, Doc,” I said. “I guess Ziegler was telling the truth
from the start. It’s Clay Richard’s gun.”
Shiloh looked at it, and his face showed what I felt. “Sonny
didn’t manage to keep it long, did he?”
“No,” I said. “Well, if he wants a gun that bad he’s bound to
get hold of another one somewhere, somehow. Shiloh, will you call Mr. Hightower
over.”
Shiloh nodded and stepped outside into the hot sun. He was
gone less than a minute, and during that time Doc and I were quiet. The kid’s
mother kept mumbling to herself, but I didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
Hightower, all five foot four of him, came into my office,
with Shiloh trailing behind. “Yes, Marshal?”
“Mr. Hightower, it appears that I have business for you after
all. Get some paper and a pencil. I want some notices printed.”
“Right away,” said Hightower with that mercenary gleam in his
eye. Last week it had made me angry. Now I just felt old. Old and tired.
Hightower sat on the edge of my desk, licked his pencil, and
said, “Go ahead, Marshal.”
“Wanted for murder -”
“Wanted for murder…”
I turned to the boy’s mother. “What’s the boy’s name?”
She sniffled and looked at me. “Same as mine. Bonnie. William
Bonnie.”
“William Bonnie.”
“William Bonnie…”
“Age twelve, height, about five feet. Hair light. Eyes blue.”
I looked at Mrs. Bonnie. “I don’t suppose he’s known by any other name?”
Bonnie shook her head. “No. Everyone just called him Billy.
Or the kid.”
“Also known as Billy, the Kid.”
THE END
