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“Dodge City!” The
stagecoach came to a slippery, lurching halt on filthy, mud-choked Front
Street. The driver, dripping wet from
the unrelenting, cold, misting rain in spite of his oilskin, handed Kitty down
out of the coach and advised, “Miss, we’ll be here for an hour so you got time
to git you some breakfast ‘fore we leave out again.”
Kitty had surreptitiously counted her money on the drive
here through Indian Territory, while her fellow passengers, a grizzled old
miner and an apparent gambler, had slept fitfully in the bouncing
contraption. Forty dollars and sixty-six
cents. It wouldn’t get her a whole lot
further. But it got her out of Abilene,
and it would get her the hell outta this god-forsaken town, she thought as she
looked around at the depressingly saturated streets and drab, gray buildings of
Dodge City, Kansas.
Kitty was heading back East.
She’d had a stomach full of cowboys and outlaws and lawmen who turned a
blind eye to their transgressions. The
straw that broke the camel’s back was two weeks ago today when her friend
Maddie Blaine was knifed by a liquored up ranch hand. Sheriff Burkett had given the young man what
amounted to a slap on the hand, seeing as how it was only a whore who’d gotten
hurt. Kitty helped give her friend a
decent burial, and then hopped on a stagecoach headed east, not looking back
once.
She miserably slogged across Front Street to the café and
ordered the cheapest thing on the breakfast menu, shivering with the damp and the
cold as she held her hands around her coffee cup for the residual warmth. It was then that a man strode past her
table, the biggest man she’d ever seen in all her born days. Her eyes widened nearly imperceptibly as she
watched him head for a table across the room, and he sat alone, facing in her
direction. Long legs, long arms, broad
shoulders, enormous hands. He removed
his sodden hat and she noticed an enviable mass of dark curls that he
immediately ran his fingers through in an apparent effort to tame them. She also noticed his badge. A
lawman. Huh. What do you know about that, she archly
thought to herself. She wondered if he
was on the take, too.
But there was something about this man. He had a kind face, and she couldn’t help but
notice his striking, gentle blue eyes.
Just the fact that he wasn’t ogling her across the room said something
to her. The man was polite. She watched him interacting with several of
the other customers. This lawman was
liked and respected, she could tell. And
he was treating the women with deference.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen anything like that.
Not only did he not ogle her, the man didn’t even notice
her. He was intent on eating an enormous
breakfast of ham and eggs and biscuits and gravy. She didn’t know where he put it all, but she
supposed that it took a lot of food to keep a big boy like him goin’
proper. And she could tell also, by the
way the few women in the place furtively looked his way all pie-eyed, that he
was most probably unattached.
Kitty hurriedly finished her eggs and toast, then dug in her
reticule for the change to pay for her meal, gulping down the last of her now
lukewarm coffee. She peered down at the
forty dollars she had left and wondered again how far it would get her. She looked across the café at that handsome
lawman that she found herself curiously drawn to for some strange reason. This man who made her heart squeeze in her chest
when she gazed secretly at him from under her lashes.
She hurriedly wiped her mouth with her napkin and
reluctantly left the dry confines of the café to head out in the misty morning
toward the stagecoach. She spied a
saloon across the street called the Long Branch as she squelched through the
mire, and her stomach suddenly felt queer.
She made it to the coach as the driver called out, “Just in time,
Miss! We’re headin’ out!”
“I want my bag!” she blurted out.
The driver’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “What?”
“I said I want my bag!
I’ve changed my mind. I’m staying
in Dodge.” She squinted against the rain
which pelted her face harder as she looked at the confused driver.
“Are you sure, Miss?
This is a purty rough cowtown…”
“I’m sure. But
thanks.” She smiled at him even as rain
dripped miserably down her collar.
He untied her lone carpetbag from the top of the coach and
asked, “This the one?”
“Yes.”
He handed it down to her and said, “You take care, now, you
hear?”
“I will,” she called out.
“Thank you for your concern, driver.”
“Good luck to you,” he answered and slapped the reins over
the horse’s backs. “Hyah!”
Kitty straightened her shoulders, gripped her bag, and
headed down the street for the Long Branch Saloon.
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Doc tiredly switched his heavy black leather bag to the
opposite hand and rapped on the bedroom door of Bill Pence’s newest girl, rubbing
his gritty eyes because he’d been up half the night with the feverish Fordham
baby. Doc was put out because this girl
had been in Dodge two whole days and he hadn’t been able to examine her yet. By golly, he sure hoped she hadn’t been
working already.
Bill prided himself on running a clean house, and he and Doc
managed that together by regular exams of the girls for any signs whatsoever of
disease. Any girl who had the slightest
symptoms of the pox or clap would not be allowed to work until Doc had treated
her and made sure she was clean as a whistle, inside and out. Long Branch customers appreciated the care
that Doc Adams gave Bill’s girls and patronized his establishment more
frequently than some of the other houses that weren’t so careful about the
health and hygiene of the employees.
Doc knocked again, this time a little more insistently. Maybe she was still in bed. Saloon girls tended to sleep awful late
according to most folks’ standards since they worked long, grueling shifts
until the wee hours of the morning.
Finally, the door creaked open and he was immediately taken
by the sight of sleepy, sapphire blue eyes and tousled, long, vibrant red hair
woven into a loose, thick braid over the girl’s shoulder. She didn’t appear to be more than twenty or
so, especially without all the paint Doc knew the girls typically wore. She looked young and sweet and beautiful and could’ve
been a rancher’s daughter, if he didn’t already know better. But
when she spoke, her low, musical, sad voice hinted at some of the
world-weariness that plagued women who sold their bodies for a living. “You the Doc?” she asked as she stifled a
yawn.
He shook himself from his reverie and greeted her amiably. “That I am, young lady. How are you today?”
Rubbing drowsily at her eyes, she stretched luxuriously like
a cat. “I’m fine, Doc. Come on in.
That’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a month of Sundays.” She closed the door behind him and gestured
to the still unmade bed. “I’m sure sorry
about the mess. Bill told me you were
comin’ today and I’m afraid I overslept a little.”
Doc set his bag on the bureau. “So when was the last time you were examined properly
by a doctor?”
“Not since before I left Abilene. We got looked at pretty regular by the doc
there, too, although I wouldn’t say that it was all that proper.” She gazed at him evenly. “But I haven’t worked since I got here. Nothin’ besides servin’ beer and whiskey
downstairs. Honest, Doc.”
“Good girl.” Doc
smiled in relief. He shook his
head. “I’m sorry, where’s my
manners?” He held out a hand to
her. “Everybody in these parts just
calls me Doc. Doc Adams. And you are?” He thought she looked as delicate as a china
doll, but he knew there must be some of that red-headed fire in her blood, or
she wouldn’t have made it this far in life relatively unscathed.
“Kitty. Kitty
Russell.” She returned his handshake and
smiled genuinely.
“Kitty. Well, that’s
a pretty name. I’m glad you’ve had this
sort of examination in the past, Kitty, ‘cause you’ll know pretty much what to
expect.” Doc removed his suit coat and
laid it neatly beside his bag.
Kitty sighed and untied her dressing gown sash. “Yeah, Doc, I know exactly what to
expect. Let’s get started.” And with that, she let the gown slide off her
shoulders and puddle in the floor. Kitty
Russell stood before him stark naked.
Doc’s mouth dropped open.
Kitty patiently waited while Doc’s eyebrows rose to the
heavens. She asked calmly, “You want me
on the bed, Doc?”
“Wh…why…” he stuttered, until he’d gathered his senses and
grabbed her gown off the floor, hurriedly draping it around her shoulders and
pulling it firmly closed in front.
Kitty looked astonished.
“What on earth’s the matter, Doc?”
Doc spluttered, “Are you trying to give an old man like me a
heart attack, young lady?”
“Whattya mean, Doc?”
“I mean…” He rolled
his eyes heavenward and amended, “Oh, never you mind what I mean, but let’s go
about this slow and easy, honey. You
don’t have to strip down to your altogether for me. Let’s put you on the bed and cover you with a
sheet, alright?”
“Well, I know you probably wanna check me first before you
take your pay in trade.” She sat on her
bed and looked up at him expectantly, rubbing the loose end of her braid
absently on her cheek.
“In trade?!”
Kitty was afraid Doc’s eyes were gonna bulge right outta his
head. And his face was becoming a
distinctly unhealthy shade of red. “Well,
yeah.” Kitty looked puzzled. “That’s the way all the other doctors I’ve gone
to have worked things. I ain’t got much
money, Doc. I just moved here, remember?”
“What in tarnation?!
You mean those doctors...” Doc’s expression
was thunderous. “…partook of your
services in order to be compensated for your examination fee?”
“We didn’t have much of a choice, to tell the honest truth.” He watched as she picked at a raveling thread
on her dressing gown seam.
“Well, if that don’t beat all…” Doc scrubbed furiously at his gray
mustache. “Kitty, things aren’t like
that here in Dodge, I can assure you.”
“So, you mean you don’t want me, Doc?” She gazed up at him doubtfully with those
big, melting blue eyes.
Thoughtfully, he stared down at this vulnerable girl, now propped
on her elbow on the messy bed, knees drawn up protectively. “Now, Kitty, I may be a little past my prime,
but I ain’t dead yet.” He pressed his
lips together and took a calming breath through his nose. “But I am your doctor, most certainly not
your customer, and it would be most unprofessional…”
Her expression was perplexed. He wondered what kinda people she’d been
exposed to her whole life, if she thought this was the way normal people
acted. He took off his hat and placed it
on the bureau, ran his fingers through his wiry gray hair in frustration until
it stood on end, then amended, “Never mind…
I’m here to take care of you, honey.
Are you ready for your exam? I
just need you to lie on the bed and relax.
Let’s put this sheet over you.
Now, while I go over here and wash my hands, I want you to slide down
all the way to the end of the bed for me, alright, sweetheart?”
He wasn’t sure why, but he was already drawn to this beauty
who must be all alone in the world with no one to watch after her. He was going to make sure at least one person
started looking after her welfare, even if it was just to make sure she didn’t
die of a horrible sexually transmitted disease before her time.
“This sure ain’t how Doc Travers did things.” She laid back and sighed. “Is it gonna hurt, Doc?”
Doc was busy scrubbing his hands at the wash basin and
muttering furiously to himself about so-called doctors who oughta be shot by
gum. Then he realized Kitty was speaking
to him. “What’d you say, Kitty?” he
called over his shoulder.
“I said, ‘Is it gonna hurt?’
You don’t do things like my last doctor.”
“I most certainly hope not,” he muttered sourly, then turned
around, drying his hands on a towel. He
walked toward her slowly, reaching down to tug the sheet even higher, all the
way up under her chin, then he patted her sheet-covered shoulder in
satisfaction. He spoke more to himself
than to her.
“You’re young enough to be
my daughter.” Her pretty face and sweet,
trusting smile made his heart ache for what he knew this girl had already been
through in her young life as he sighed, “No honey, I’ll try not to hurt you a
bit. I just wanna make sure you’re okay. And to make sure you stay okay, I want you to
get regular examinations, you hear me?”
“Yes, Doc, I hear ya’.”
“Okay then…” he answered as he pulled up a straight-backed
chair to the end of the bed, rolling his sleeves higher. “Young lady, I need you to slide down towards
me.” Kitty watched his head disappear
behind the sheet and rolled her eyes.
tbc
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