Deputy Dogwood

            Dogwood didn’t hesitate. He ran past Henry who was still holding Holly in his arms. He darted into the alleyway beside the Buffalo Saloon. Penny Yearling was waiting for Dogwood only a few feet into his chase. He stopped, pulling his revolver from its sheath.

            “Don’t. Please… I can explain everything,” Penny said, holding her hands up and dropping her revolver. As she did, Mr. Albright suddenly stepped out of the shadows and put a knife to her throat.

            “Don’t get no wild ideas… They lured us, Flint,” Mr. Albright said before Penny could speak, “both of ‘em… Holly… her sister…”

            “And what of the ledger?” Dogwood accused, watching Penny swallow hard as Mr. Albright held the knife at her throat.

            “Grizzly’s.”

            “It was your handwritin’, Vincent,” Dogwood clicked a bullet into the chamber of his revolver. Mr. Albright squeezed the knife against Penny’s throat but she didn’t cry out. Tears flecked her face silently and her green eyes pleaded with Dogwood.

            “You’ll pretend you never saw that ledger, Dogwood. I’m not a murderer. You saw who murdered my son… Grizzly… my partner…” 

            “You aren’t a murderer…yet,” Dogwood acknowledged as Mr. Albright still held the knife against Penny without relenting.

            “Let me go and forget you saw the dealings.”

            “Or what?” Dogwood’s voice lowered and his green eyes became dangerous. Mr. Albright was only alive because Dogwood willed it so and they both knew it.

            “If you shoot me, nobody will believe justice was served.”

            As the words spilled from his mouth, Henry and Vick ran past the alleyway and then quickly back tracked. Vick was wide eyed at his father and Mr. Albright faltered as they stepped behind Dogwood. When he faltered, Penny struggled against his grip just enough to duck down. Dogwood’s revolver left his gun and Mr. Albright fell to the earth. Henry ran up to him and turned him over, blood spilling against his left shoulderblade. He was panting as Henry pressed his boot onto his arm to hold him down and took the knife from his hand and revolver from his vest. Vick stood over his father in disgust.

            “Just kill me… don’t make me live to see… a cell.”

            Vick shook his head and turned to Dogwood.

            “Hang him.”

            Dogwood nodded as Vick helped Penny to her feet and they embraced, Penny crying into his arms.

            “It’s over now,” Vick said softly to her and then turned her face up towards him to press his lips against her own.

“But… why was Holly’s sister at your meetin’ place?” Henry accused as he watched them now kiss, thinking of Sam being bed ridden and shot. The events didn’t line up and he wanted the truth. Vick and Penny pulled away from each other. Vick looked from Henry to Dogwood.

“You didn’t tell him?” Vick turned to Dogwood.

“I tell him what he needs to know,” Dogwood countered, trying to extinguish the heat that creeped suddenly into Henry’s face.

“And you had me thinkin’ this entire time that we were chasin’ Penny?” Henry turned on his father.

“We were. A man’s word only is true when events prove his claim,” Dogwood stated matter-of-factly.

“What claim would that be?”

“That Penny was bein’ framed o’ course,” Vick said, squeezing Penny’s hand.

Dogwood was about to speak when he spotted Mr. Albright slowly crawling away on the ground to his revolver. Henry stopped him and drug him up painfully to his feet. He moaned aloud and fell against Henry, whose shirt was already covered in blood.

In the following days, multiple witnesses in the Buffalo Saloon finally came forward to corroborate Holly and her sister’s involvement in the murders and the back door dealings with Grizzly. It turned out that Holly and her sister’s father was a fur trader and Grizzly and Mr. Albright had staged his killing with their men. Then they cheated him out of his business and made them all destitute. Mr. Albright had lured Penny there that day thinking she was Holly’s sister, planning to have his men kill her too. When both Penny and Holly showed up, Mr. Albright’s plans went awry.

Plotting her revenge and stewing in disguised poverty, Holly ran into Henry at a saloon five years ago and knew he was Dogwood’s son. She wanted to get on his good graces, lure him into love, and bide her time until her sister could make it to the city. Holly used Penny’s features to cover up her sister’s murders. Holly had believed Dogwood was losing his ability to solve cases after the case on Cripple Creek where Colt Bradford was acquitted.

After witnesses came forward, Mr. Albright rotted in jail as he sat through his very public trial. That next Friday, he was hanged out front for all the business folk, his wife, his son, Penny, and the law to see. Sam made extra effort to rise out of bed the best he could and see it. Mr. Albright was buried that following day and with that, Henry had chosen to bury Holly on the outskirts of the city. He now stood in the cemetery and nailed a small wooden cross with her name carved into it into the mound. He wiped his hands and stood, knowing that nobody came to see neither her nor her sister’s burial.

Henry stood gazing at the cross and wondering after five years if he’d be able to bury her memory and the lies she told him for so long. He thought only of how God’s vengeance and God’s mercy hold hands so closely that they are impossible to untangle. As he stood with the Denver spring breeze kissing his face, Dogwood stood at the mouth of the cemetery. He didn’t want to disturb his son. After a while, he turned and was surprised to see his father standing there. His light brown hair was tucked under his cowboy hat and his gray eyes shimmered in the midday sun. His boots walked the path to where his father stood. Dogwood was leaning against the fence.

“I’m sorry, son,” Dogwood said earnestly. Henry inhaled a huge breath and then shook his head.

“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry for… Reckon you were right… you’ve always been right about Holly,” Henry glanced back at her grave and then at Dogwood.

“I’m still sorry.”

“Thanks,” Henry nodded and then brushed past his father and out of the gate of the Denver cemetery. It was a small cemetery and on the edge of the city where nobody’s were buried. That’s who Henry wanted Holly to be to him, a nobody. Dogwood followed his son to their horses that were strung up nearby on the fence. Henry put his hand on his saddle horn.

“Henry,” Dogwood’s voice stopped Henry from putting his boot into his stirrup. He turned back towards his father.

“Yeah?”

“You gonna ride back to Cripple Creek with Sam?”

“Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on there,” Henry stated flatly. But Dogwood suddenly grinned and his green eyes danced.

“Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?”

Henry suddenly grinned, mirroring his father. He shook his head at his father’s ridiculous suggestion before he spoke again.

“What on earth would I do there?”

 “I’m goin’ to Aspen,” Dogwood shrugged and patted his son on the shoulder before mounting up onto his horse.

“So you’re just gonna leave again?”

“Reckon you could come there if you want.”

“What on earth would I do there?” Henry asked, mirroring Dogwood. Dogwood tossed him a badge which Henry caught in his hand. He rolled his eyes and was going to toss it back but he had seen the words Deputy Dogwood on it. Henry raised his eyebrows and fingered the words on the front. Then he shrugged and pinned it on his vest.

“I’m not just gonna follow you blindly,” Henry challenged, finally meeting his father’s eyes.

“Sam does alright.”

“Sam doesn’t know you well enough,” Henry countered, grabbing his reins and urging his horse forward back into the city and then head to Aspen.

“Maybe you’re right son,” Dogwood winked and suddenly sped off away from Henry at a break neck pace. Henry called for him but Dogwood’s boyish laugh rang through the streets of Denver. He was lighter and after so many years of estrangement from his son, finally, they were back together again. Dogwood could not think of a better end to a horrible couple of months in Denver spending his time in the back of saloons. It was bittersweet, gaining his son and his son simultaneously losing someone he loved.

“You alright?” Dogwood finally asked an hour outside of Denver after Henry closed up his inn. Henry looked at him and then stared back at the mountains that surrounded them.

“I hope that one day I’ll look back and not regret the last five years.”

Dogwood didn’t answer, knowing how long he had been traveling, and left Henry in Denver, only sending money to keep him fed.

“You regret it?”

Dogwood pondered Henry’s question, the faces of all the lives he saved by traveling the state as a Marshall.

“I regret a lot of things, son. A lot of things.”