Bullets Don't Die Read Free Page A

the men. The Kid didn’t want to argue with the man who had saved his life, so he broke out his shovel and did the digging.
    He put the four men in a single grave, and by the time he finished filling in the hole in the ground, night was falling.
    “Don’t worry, I can still find us a good campsite, even in the dark,” Tate said as they started west along the creek. “I’ve been all over this part of the country for years, know it like the back of my own hand.”
    The Kid was leading one of the extra horses, along with his pack animal. The marshal led the other two horses. As they rode at an easy pace along the stream, The Kid asked, “Have you been a lawman in other towns besides Copperhead Springs?”
    “Oh, Lord, yes, a dozen or more. I was one of Hickok’s deputies in Abilene, you know.”
    “Wild Bill himself ?”
    “That’s right. I never really thought he was all that wild, except when circumstances forced him to be. Most of the time he seemed like a fine gentleman. It nearly broke my heart when I heard he’d been shot from behind by that coward up in Deadwood. If Bill had been facing the door, Jack McCall never would have got that close to him with a gun.”
    After a couple decades of estrangement, The Kid and his father had grown closer over the past few years. He had heard quite a few stories from Frank Morgan about the old days of the Wild West. He was interested to hear what else Jared Tate had to say. “Where else did you serve as a peace officer?”
    “I was a Ford County deputy when Jim Masterson was the sheriff. Served alongside him and his brother Bat.”
    “Really? I know Bat Masterson.”
    “Is that so?” Tate laughed. “Well, it just goes to show you it’s true what they say about how the West is really a small place despite all those wide open spaces. Bat’s a fine man.”
    “He is,” The Kid agreed, thinking of how Masterson had given him a hand during his cross-country quest. He wasn’t going to let himself think too much about how that had turned out, but he wasn’t going to forget the people who had helped him out along the way.
    “Dodge City’s where I met the Earps, too,” Tate went on. “I wound up heading out to Arizona Territory some years back and spent some time in Tombstone while they were there. Fine bunch of boys, mind you, but . . . headstrong, I guess you could say. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them.”
    “I’ve heard Wyatt Earp has gone up to Alaska to cash in on that gold rush.”
    “What gold rush?” Tate asked with a frown.
    “They’ve found gold along some river up there called the Yukon. It caused a rush just like the one to California back in ’49. You haven’t heard about it?”
    “Life’s pretty slow in Copperhead Springs,” Tate said with a smile. “And I’ve never been all that good about keeping up with the news. To me a newspaper’s got its uses . . . but most of ’em involve the outhouse!”
    The Kid laughed at that. As they rode on, Tate continued reminiscing about various places he had worn a star, most of them small towns in Kansas and Nebraska. “I like this part of the country, you know,” he mused. “From time to time I might go someplace like Tombstone, just to see something new, but I always come back to these parts. It seems to me this is the heart of the country, and not just because it’s in the middle. It’s the beating heart, where the things that make this America are most honest and true.”
    The Kid supposed most people thought that was the case about where they lived, if they thought about such things at all, but he didn’t say it to Marshal Tate. He just smiled and nodded.
    A short time later they came to a spot along the creek perfect for camping, with an open space in the trees, level ground, plenty of grass for the horses, and an easy slope down to the stream. They picketed and unsaddled the horses, then The Kid gathered some wood to build a fire. There were enough broken cottonwood branches