Don't Poke the Bear!

Chapter 3

I DON'T ENJOY killin' people. Besides all the church reasons, it's almost always messy, and you have to deal with the relatives. If there ain't no relatives, you have to deal with the corpse. In large towns that's the undertaker's job. But we don't have undertakers in Dodge, which means it's up to the dead man's family to dispose of his remains. But when there's no family present, the one who does the killin' is supposed to handle the buryin'.

I walk over to Vlad, pick up his gun, and test it in my holster. It's a nice one, better than mine, and fits nicely. I start to walk away and realize everyone else is walkin' away, too. I reckon the whole town'd be content to let Vlad lay in the street forever if it kept them from havin' to bury him. In my own case, I ain't finished the hole I been diggin' for three weeks, and have no desire to dig another one.

I know better than to ask for volunteers. I never met one yet who'd bury a stranger. First of all, there ain't that many picks and shovels in Dodge that ain't already been wore out, and second, the ground is hard as a rock.

I walk back over to Vlad, check his pockets, and find he's carryin' exactly four dollars cash. I sigh. "Anyone know if he's got a horse?"

"Jim Bigsby here?" someone calls out.

Jim runs the livery stable, but he ain't among the folks in the street.

I only know one place that'll bury a body in this part of the country, and that's Fort Dodge, five miles away. For ten dollars Major Cardigan will order his troops to bury your body for you. 'Course, you got to get it there.

"I'll pay someone to take the body to Fort Dodge," I say.

"I'll do it for four bucks," Earl Gray says, "if someone'll help me load him into the wagon."

"When?"

"I'd rather not load him tonight," he says.

"Well, we can't leave him lyin' in the street."

"Make it five dollars," Earl says, "and he can stay in my wagon bed tonight. I'll haul him to Fort Dodge in the mornin'."

There are twenty people standin' around me, but no one offers to do it for less.

I tell Earl, "For five dollars, your wife can help you load him."

"I reckon she'll want his clothes."

I reckon he's right. No scrap of paper, bit of cloth, or piece of wood goes unused in Dodge, nor any other part of Kansas. A Dodge City wife like May Gray would be a good enough seamstress to get fifteen dollars of wear out of Vlad's clothin'. With three little ones at home, that's a bounty. So scarce is cloth for clothin' out west, when I met Gentry, she didn't own but one pair of undergarments, and hers, like many folks', was made from a used flour sack.

"May can keep the clothes," I say, handin' him the four dollars I took from Vlad. "Come see me at the Spur when you've got him loaded, and we'll settle up."