Blood Duel

Chapter 7

Frank Lafferty tried not to fidget in his chair as he waited for his editor’s decision. He was dressed in his finest suit and had paid the barber a visit to give the best impression. So much was riding on the outcome that a fine sheen of sweat covered him from crown to toe. He hoped the editor would not notice.

Ezekiel Hinds, or Zeke as those at the Times called him, had been in the newspaper business for more years than everyone on the staff combined. A seasoned journalist who knew all there was to know and then some, he was responsible for hiring and promotions.

Lafferty desperately desired to move up. He had been at the Times for a year and a half, half of that as Edison Farnsworth’s assistant. Farnsworth had regarded himself as God’s gift to journalism and treated Lafferty as little more than his personal errand boy. He once told Lafferty, “The only way you or anyone else will ever fill my shoes is if I die.”

Lafferty had resigned himself to being an assistant forever, and then Farnsworth had done something wonderful: He had gone and gotten himself killed.

Now the suspense was killing Lafferty. Hinds had read the piece twice and was reading it a third time. Unable to keep silent any longer, Lafferty quietly asked, “Well?”

“Not bad, son.” Hinds always called men younger than him “son.” “Not bad at all. You stuck to the facts.”

Lafferty felt the tension drain from him in a rush of release. “Thank you, sir.” He beamed. He saw the job as his. He saw himself as the rising star of Dodge City journalism, and once he conquered Dodge, who knew? New York City, perhaps, or San Francisco.

“But it is not enough,” Hinds said, bursting Lafferty’s bubble.

Panic welled, nearly constricting Lafferty’s throat, nearly making it impossible for him to squeak, “Sir?”

Hinds leaned back in his chair. He was slight of build and gray of hair. Those who did not know him would never suspect his unassuming appearance hid as keen a mind as anyone could ask for. “The facts are not always enough. Sometimes they need to be embellished. Surely you read a lot of what Farnsworth wrote?”

“He had me go over everything for spelling and grammar,” Lafferty said. As much as he hated to admit it, he rarely found a mistake. Farnsworth had a swelled head, yes, but he had the talent to justify the swelling.

“Didn’t you learn anything?” Hinds asked, not unkindly. He placed his forearms on his desk. “Listen, son. The newspaper business is not cut-and-dried. It is not just the facts and only the facts. Facts are dry. Facts are boring. They are the bare bones, if you will, and what our readers want is the juicy meat. Do you follow me?”

Lafferty was not quite sure what the editor was getting at, but he responded, “Of course, sir.”

“Then follow his example. Take this and rewrite it. Throw in some emotion. Stir people up. Decide whether you want this Frost character to be the hero or the villain and slant your account accordingly.”

“The hero or the villain?” Lafferty had always been under the impression that a journalist’s first and foremost responsibility was to be objective.

“A hero. A man who shot a card cheat and then defended himself when the cheat’s brothers sought revenge. A villain. A man who cowardly shot another man in the back and then murdered the brothers while hiding under a table. You decide which you want him to be.”

Lafferty could not keep quiet no matter how much he wanted to. “But shouldn’t that be for the readers to decide? Is it right to lead them around by the nose?”

Hinds sat back and thoughtfully tapped the edge of his desk. Finally he said, “What is the Times, son?”

“A newspaper.”

“What else, son?” Hinds asked, and when Lafferty did not answer right away, he said, “The Times is a business. All newspapers are. They exist to make money. If they don’t make money, they fold. Therefore it behooves them to do whatever is necessary to increase their circulations so they make as much money as they can. Follow me?”

“I never thought of it in quite that fashion,” Lafferty admitted.

Hinds smiled. “That is because you are young and an idealist. I was the same at your age. Ideals are fine and dandy, but we must never let them get in the way of reality, and the reality is that people don’t want just the bare bones—they want juicy meat, and the more of that meat we feed them, the more of them buy our paper. Follow me now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I will tell you what,” Hinds said, sliding the piece across the desk. “Rewrite this. Throw in some juice. Do a good job and we will run it in the afternoon edition. Do a really good job and I will let you fill in for Farnsworth on a probationary basis.”

“Probationary?”

“You must prove yourself, son. Show me you have what it takes and the job is yours. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“More than fair,” Lafferty said, excitement bubbling in him like bubbling water in a hot pot.

Hinds grew thoughtful again. “In fact, now that I think about it, write two pieces. One about Frost and another about Farnsworth. Make Farnsworth out to be a lion of journalism. Lament his loss to the good people of Dodge City, and to the world.”

Lafferty took a risk. “I don’t mention he was in love with himself and thought most people are idiots?”

Hinds laughed. “No, you do not mention he was an egotistical ass. Praise his virtues, and if you have to, make up virtues to praise. Stir the emotions of our readers. That’s the juicy meat, son.” When the younger man did not leap up and run off to rewrite the story, Hinds asked, “Is something else on your mind?”

“I was thinking, sir,” Lafferty said. “I can turn this into a series of articles. Milk it for all it is worth.” Now that he knew what was required of him, he saw all sorts of possibilities.

“That is fine but don’t get ahead of yourself. Do the rewrite and we will talk some more.”

Lafferty rose and offered his hand in gratitude. “Thank you, sir. I have learned more from you in the past ten minutes than I ever learned from Edison Farnsworth.”

“Flattery, son, will get you everywhere.”

The white one-room schoolhouse sat by itself five hundred yards beyond the town limits. That was Ernestine Prescott’s doing. When she answered the appeals placed in several Eastern newspapers for a schoolmarm and came to Dodge City only to find they did not have a schoolhouse, she politely but firmly requested that it be built outside town, where her young charges could pursue their education in relative peace and solitude. Noisy streets were not conducive to study.

Dodge’s civic leaders were happy to oblige. Schoolmarms were hard to come by. There were not enough of them to meet the growing demand on the frontier, and Ernestine’s credentials were impressive. She had taught school for six years in Hartford, Connecticut, and for another six at a country school in the Catskills.

Ernestine was devoted to teaching and inspiring young minds. So much so, one day she realized she was pushing thirty and did not have a husband or a family or any of the trappings that went with them. That bothered her, but not nearly as much as the realization that there was a great big wide world out there she had seen precious little of. Connecticut and New York were the only places she had been.

So when by pure chance Ernestine saw in the newspaper that Dodge City was in need of a schoolmarm, she wrote them that very evening. She listed her credentials and cited her experience and threw in a comment about how much she would love to teach there, and much to her amazement, without requiring that she prove her mettle, she was accepted. Later she learned she was the first teacher to reply, and they were in such dire need, they accepted her right away. Still later she learned she was the only teacher who wrote them.

Now here Ernestine was, teaching school on the frontier. She had to admit Dodge was rougher than she expected it would be. She always thought the stories about frontier life were exaggerated. It could not possibly be as bad as everyone claimed or no one would live there. But Dodge was everything ever written about it, and more. A bustling hotbed of greed, lust, and violence. Oh, there were plenty of churchgoing folk, plenty of fine people who would not harm the proverbial fly, but there were also plenty who would. Plenty who liked the wild side and all its trimmings.

Ernestine stopped grading papers and put down her pencil. She was stiff from so much sitting. Rising, she moved to the small mirror above the basin where the children were required to wash their hands after playtime. Ernestine was a stickler for clean hands. Clean hands meant clean books and clean papers turned in.

Staring at her reflection, Ernestine was reminded of a remark her brother once made. “You are a broomstick in a dress, sis.” He had not meant to be cruel. They were talking about how different they were. Her brother, Dearborn, could stand to lose a hundred pounds and that still would not be enough. She, on the other hand, truly was a broomstick. A broomstick with fine brown hair she always wore in a bun. A broomstick with a pointed chin and a beak of a nose and high cheekbones. She had a high forehead, too. Her eyes, she thought, were her best feature. A light shade of brown, almost tawny, but they alone could not redeem her. She was plain, hideously plain. No wonder she never had a beau. No wonder she would spend her days as a spinster.

Ernestine’s thin lips compressed. She must stop thinking like that, she scolded herself, and attend to her responsibilities. That was the secret to happiness. Forget personal woes and focus on the job. Just the job.

Ernestine turned to go back to her desk and drew up short, dumfounded to behold a man standing in the schoolhouse doorway. She had left it open to admit the evening breeze. “My word!” she blurted. “You gave me a start!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to.”

Ernestine regained her composure. Clasping her hands, she walked down the row of desks. “May I help you?”

He was standing sideways to her. With his small stature, his features made Ernestine think of a mouse. His dusty buckskins smelled of sweat and were in need of washing. “I am hoping you can, yes, ma’am,” he said quietly, wringing his hat. “I wouldn’t want to bother you, though.”

“What is it that you want, exactly?” Ernestine politely asked. “Do you have a child you would like to enroll?”

The man turned red, bright, embarrassed red. “Good Lord, ma’am, no,” he bleated. “I ain’t even married.”

“Am not,” Ernestine said.

“Ma’am?”

“You should not use ain’t. You should say, ‘I am not married.’ We must set an example for the children.”

“But there’s just you and me here, ma’am.”

“Even so, we must be vigilant against bad habits, Mr.—?” Ernestine stopped and waited.

“Jeeter, ma’am. You can call me Jeeter.” He held out his hand and in doing so turned to face her and the sunlight flashed on the pearl handles of a revolver at his hip.

“I trust you were not aware I do not permit guns anywhere near my school,” Ernestine said sternly.

“No, ma’am, I wasn’t.”

“Guns are the devil’s playthings. Remove it and go put it in your saddlebags and we can continue our conversation, Mr. Jeeter,” Ernestine directed. “That is your horse, I take it, by the pump?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is, and no, ma’am, I can’t. And Jeeter is my first name, not my last, so you don’t need the Mr.”

Ernestine did not know quite what to make of him. He was polite, and had friendly eyes, but he seemed scared of her, and his English was atrocious. “I do not understand. Why can’t you take off your pistol?”

The mousy man sighed and said almost sadly, “My last name is Frost, ma’am. I am Jeeter Frost.”

Ernestine had the impression he thought the name should mean something to her. “Mr. Frost, then. I ask again, why can’t you take off your pistol?”

“I like being alive and I have me a heap of enemies who would like me feeding worms.”

“I am afraid I do not quite fathom what you are getting at, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine said.

“You have never heard of me, then?”

“Should I?”

“Folks talk about me some. I guess because they have nothing better to talk about. Or maybe it’s me being partway somebody. Not that I ever meant to be. Throw a little lead and suddenly you are.”

“Excuse me?” Ernestine was beginning to think he was one of those eccentric characters who hung about Dodge, like the man who wore a rabbit coat and carried a carrot everywhere.

“I’ve dabbled in gore, ma’am. Once you do, you are branded for life. I’ve never hired out my trigger finger, you understand. I haven’t gone that far. But I can’t seem to get away from it.”

“You are speaking in riddles, Mr. Frost,” Ernestine chided. “Speak plainly if you want me to understand.”

“I kill people, ma’am.”

“You?” Ernestine smiled. The notion of this timid mouse of a man harming anyone was preposterous.

“The man-killer from Missouri, they call me, even though I’m not from Missouri. But that’s why you need to keep my visit to yourself. I killed the Blight brothers and folks are liable to make a fuss over it.”

Ernestine began to think he was serious. She had not read the newspaper the day before, but she seemed to recall hearing mention of a shooting. “What does a man like you want with me?” she asked. Images washed over her, of him pulling his gun and having his way with her, and she grew uncomfortably warm.

“I want for you to teach me to read.”