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It doesn't work, which is to say, Huggins doesn't break. He doesn't break with the whiskey. He doesn't break when Wild Bill Hickok returns to the office with bloody knuckles and a few teeth in his fists. "He thinks you did it, Matt," Bill says. "There's nothing in the world that can change his mind."
So Matt goes to Abilene. Bill lets him ride with his hands untied until they're outside of town, and then he dismounts to loosely wrap some western handcuffs around his wrists, purely for show. Chester is there (of course Chester is there, of course Chester won't leave, of course Chester has been wearing the same pouty expression for the past two days of hard riding with no signs of letting up) and he leads Matt's horse the rest of the way to the jail. Bill locks him inside and directs Chester to the stable.
Matt tells Chester to go back to Dodge and look after things, tells him he's certain the trial will be fine, tells him every reassurance he wants to hear. Chester doesn't believe him. Though it's uncharacteristic of him, though he has seldom ever disobeyed direct orders, he doesn't go. He takes up residence in the Abilene office from open to close. Where he goes after closing, Matt doesn't know, only that he's there as soon as Bill unlocks the door at dawn.
It's over a week before the circuit court judge arrives. After a few days, the townsfolk comment on Bill's favoritism, how no other prisoner has a partner limping around like a scrap-fattened stray dog. Bill coldly gives Chester a badge. "He's a sheriff's deputy, and he can stay at the jail as much as he likes."
Later, when Chester goes to fetch lunch, Matt asks Bill from behind the bars, "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"What's the hurt? I trust him."
"He's pretty upset about this whole thing."
"Chester's harmless," Bill says. "What's he going to do? Try to fight it out with me?" Then he laughs.
Matt is unsettled. But Bill isn't stupid enough to give Chester the keys to the cells, and the friendly company is to his benefit, so he stays silent, praying that no one in Abilene has the mind to challenge the newest deputy. Chester spends the remaining nights in the cell beside his own, the barred door open. He snores in his sleep. It's familiar. It almost feels like home.
The morning of the trial, Chester is outside when Bill comes to fetch him. "They're asking me to be a character witness." He opens the door to the cell. Matt pauses long enough to let him handcuff him. Then, he faces him.
"I'd be obliged to you, Bill."
His eyes are steady and unwavering. "Did you do it, Matt?"
"Do you think I did?"
"I told you I wouldn't believe it if I saw you hang for it."
"But you're asking now."
Bill pauses. "I took six of Huggins's teeth, and he didn't bend. If you plant a seed of doubt deep enough, it'll eventually grow roots." He tilts his head. The dusty air in the back of the jail frames his face in an ethereal light, something like Charon escorting him to eternity. "Did you?"
Matt shakes his head. "I didn't kill Lou Price."
Bill claps him on the shoulder.
The courthouse is full. Chester is sitting behind Matt, whispering to his ear. "Maybe I ought to just tell them you was with me, Mr. Dillon, that you can't have done nothing 'cause you's with me the whole night."
"They'd have half a dozen witnesses to prove I was traveling alone, and then you'd be tried for perjury. Just relax, will you?"
Bill testifies to the content of his character. Huggins testifies to what he saw. The jury doesn't deliberate for very long. The judge says, "I sentence you to hang by the neck until dead," and the room seizes up with bustling action, some people throwing things, some people celebrating. In the crowd, Matt loses sight of Chester, who weaves toward a door before vanishing into the sea of bodies. He only glimpses him again out of a dirty window, doubled over, vomiting, and then Matt is pushed away from the glass and does not see Chester again.
The hanging is scheduled two days from today.
Around sunset, Bill asks, "He'll come back, won't he?"
Matt is lying back on his cot, spinning a piece of rope to occupy his hands. "He'll be back. He's probably bellied up to a bar right now. I've never seen Chester have an ailment that whiskey couldn't cure."
Bill crosses his arms. "You're taking this whole thing pretty blithely, Matt."
Peering over at him from the cot, he lets the rope lie beside him. "No use bellyaching over it, is there?" Bemoaning his fate, dreading it, thinking about the future of a noose moulded to the shape of his throat—these are things that won't benefit him now.
The door to the office opens, and Chester calls, "Mr. Hickok? Mr. Dillon?" in a voice astonishingly clear. He's walking in a straight line when he makes his way back to the jail, his face sober as a stone.
"About time you showed up. I was ready to send out a search party," Bill says.
"I just had to clear my head a mite. Mr. Dillon, I got us some cards and horehound."
"So that's it? You're just planning on playing cards for the next two days?" Bill asks with a raised eyebrow.
Matt chuckles. "Well, I don't think your civilians would appreciate it very much if you let him take me to the operahouse, would they?"
"You two are the queerest men I've ever met." He shakes his head, walking away. "I'll be in the office."
Chester sits on the floor across from Matt, and through the bars, he shuffles the deck and deals out a hand of cards. Matt sits across from him. In the dimming sunlight through the barred windows, he sees the silt set deep in the cracks of Chester's palms, mud caked onto his boots. Dark speckled spots litter the bottoms of his jeans. "Where have you been all day?"
"I jus' told you, Mr. Dillon, I went on a li'l ride to clear my head."
"You look like you were playing around in the dirt."
"What would I have been doing that for?"
Digging a grave runs through Matt's mind, but he doesn't say it. It feels unholy to start making accusations now. Instead, he plays cards with Chester until their eyes are heavy, and then they sleep in adjacent cells. He pretends he doesn't hear Chester crying.
The next day, nobody pops up dead, and Matt briefly forgets any notions he has about Chester's whereabouts during his vanishing hours. They spend the day reminiscing. In the evening, Chester brews a pot of coffee. Matt catches him looking at the window to the jail more than once as the sun hangs lower and dwindles, and finally, in the navy darkness, he sees the tremble to his hands with the cards, and he reaches through the iron bars to steady them by the wrists.
"You don't have to stay, Chester."
His mellow brown eyes glisten. "You'd stay for me." He bows his head, staring at where Matt holds onto his hands. "You'd find a way to save me. Stayin's just—just the best I can do."
"Don't say that. Don't do that to yourself." He feels the shake in his bones, all stifled panic. "What you see tomorrow is going to stay with you for the rest of your life. There's no need to torture yourself. If it's better for you to leave, you can leave."
"So's I can live the rest of my life knowin' I'm a coward who runt off and left you for dead all by your lonesome?"
"So you can live without seeing me every time you close your eyes."
Chester sets his jaw. "I ain't going nowhere, Mr. Dillon."
Matt knows he can't make him, so he doesn't try. "Alright." In some selfish way, he's relieved. He doesn't want to spend the last twelve hours of his life alone. He's happy to spend them with Chester, even in jail.
He holds onto Chester's hands through the bars longer than he needs to, just for the brief sensation of something human, until Chester surveys the nightfall through the window again and says, "I ought to fix more coffee. I got us enough to get through the whole night."
"The whole night?"
"Yessir. This jail is about to be the going-est place in all of Abilene."
Matt laughs. Chester gets up off the floor with a grumble and a groan, his knee popping audibly, and hops to the front of the office where the oven is running. Bill is still at his desk working. Matt hears them speak through the open door.
"Mr. Hickok, can's I getcha another cup of coffee?"
"Sure thing, Chester. Thanks."
In a few minutes, Chester limps back to him, sitting on the floor. "Here you are, Mr. Dillon. Get it while it's hot."
Matt accepts the coffee cup and takes a sip, expecting some fun additive. Instead, it merely tastes like coffee, with a lingering salty aftertaste, something that cuts the bitterness. "What's the big secret this time? Thyme? Rosemary?"
"Aw, naw. I ain't got no cayenne or nothing else. It's just coffee tonight, Mr. Dillon." Matt takes another sip. He realizes he hasn't had anything to drink for awhile—he's thirsty. Chester continues, "Didn't even have any egg shells. Seemed an awful lot of trouble to waste a whole egg for it." His own mug rests on the floor beside him. It's full. He hasn't drunk from it yet.
The ceramic warms Matt's palm. "It's alright, Chester. It's good." He wraps both hands around the cup. His wrists feel weak. But he's been awake all day, and he's getting tired, and he's supposed to die tomorrow. He takes another long drink of coffee to clear his head, which suddenly feels fuzzy. Heat courses through him. "You gonna… You gonna…" The words fumble in his mouth like he's had too much whiskey. "Deal us..."
The next time he looks up at Chester, there are two of him swimming around in a kaleidoscope of color and shadow. The coffee spills in his lap. Through the wall, Bill calls out, "Chester?" sounding weak and impaired, and then the sickening thunk of an unconscious body strikes the floor.
Chester winces. "Oh, I sure hope he didn't hurt hisself." Matt lolls forward. Diving through the iron, Chester catches his face from hitting the stones, easing him downward. "Don'tchya worry, Mr. Dillon. Lemme get them keys off his belt, and we ain't never gonna see Abilene again."
Matt blacks out to the sound of his retreating boots.
How many days pass after that, Matt isn't sure. He comes to a few times, enough to feel the world swaying around him. He tries to talk, but he moans instead, and this is warning enough for Chester to give him a drink of the salty water, which makes him sleep.
He's not uncomfortable. Every time he's aware, he knows he's alright—he's not hungry or thirsty, and he's warm enough. And Chester is nearby.
Once, he wakes wrapped in a soft blanket with his head resting on a sack of old cornhusks to cushion the blows of bouncing along a rocky terrain in the back of a wagon. He is heavily drugged, so he rolls over to go back to sleep.
Days later, he rouses again. "Chester?" he mumbles, half-awake, from the leather seat of a buggy. He can't lift his head, but his open eyes cringe from the bright sunlight of midday. "Where… Where…"
"Sh, Mr. Dillon, we're alright." Chester makes him drink. He can't fight it, so he swallows, and then he sleeps with his head on Chester's shoulder.
After, he wakes up under the stars in a blanket beside a dying campfire. Chester is lying beside him snoring placidly in his ear. He shifts onto his back. "Chester?"
He snuffles awake. "Hm? Mr. Dillon?" He fixes Matt's blanket. "'S alright, Mr. Dillon, 's alright." Matt has more questions, but he feels safe here, Chester pressed against his side steadfast and warm. Chester doesn't force him to drink this time, but he does, anyway. Sleep is a reprieve. He isn't ready to face this yet.
Days later, he feels a horse underneath him as they enter another town. Whatever drug Chester is giving him has fried his brain, he thinks, because he doesn't understand anything these people say to him, but Chester does, speaking back in gibberish just as clear. The sunlight hurts Matt's eyes, so he keeps them closed, fighting to stay on his feet, while Chester drags him around by his arm.
A brown man bumps into him in a store, and when Matt looks at him, he says, "Perdóname," and Matt realizes they aren't talking gibberish, but Spanish, and when he surveys the area, most of the signs are the same. Matt doesn't speak Spanish. Apparently, Chester does. This is news to him.
Bill said Chester was harmless. Matt knew he was wrong. But he never anticipated anything like this.
Chester steadies him as he mounts his horse again. "Wha… Whatchyu tell 'em…"
Chester shushes him. "I tole 'em you's my brother, and you's deaf and dumb, so you's keep real quiet 'til we outta town." Matt rides until he's sick to his stomach, and then Chester trades their horses for another wagon from a nearby ranch.
A couple more days pass. Matt awakens in the back of a covered wagon with his hands bound. Chester has never tied him before. Beside him, there's a note that reads, Went to town for supplies. Will return directly. CG. So he reclines with his head on the cornhusk makeshift pillow and waits, cutting through the fog in the forefront of his mind, working on what he knows is true.
True: He was sentenced to hang for the murder of Lou Price.
True: Chester drugged him and Wild Bill Hickok to break him out of the Abilene jail and take him on the run.
True: They're outlaws now.
Matt has been a lot of things in his life, but an outlaw isn't one of them. He has always been on the other side of the noose, and he prides himself in that. Running away is a yellow admission of guilt for a crime he did not commit. Chester knows he feels that way—he can only assume this is why he keeps him subdued with medicine.
Limping footsteps approach the outside of the wagon. Matt lies very still until he hears Chester's voice. "Mr. Dillon?" He opens the canvas and jumps into the back of the wagon. "Oh, you's awake. I'm awful sorry I tied you up. I didn't want to drive the whole wagon into town, bein' a bit conspicuous, 'nd hated to think you might get confused 'nd try to wander off without me." He unties Matt's hands.
"Where we at?" Matt's speech is slurred as he rubs his eyes.
"It don't matter none. We're alright." Chester hands him a water bottle. For the first time, he notes there are two bottles, one with an M and one with a C, and Matt assumes this is how Chester has marked which one is drugged and which one is not. Matt pushes it away. "You's gotta be thirsty."
"No more."
He tries to hold the bottle to Matt's lips. "Take a drink."
Matt clumsily paws at his hand. "No more." Chester tries a third time, but then Matt slaps the bottle out of his grasp and kicks it to the back of the wagon where it spills. "No more, I said!"
Chester looks like a walloped puppy. "Alright," he says very quietly. "No more." Matt has figured out the secret, and he's sober enough now to keep it from happening again.
The next time Chester brings him food and water, he refuses to touch it. As a show of good faith, Chester drinks from the bottle and nibbles on the tinned tomatoes, and then, Matt begrudgingly eats and drinks. He feels straighter afterward. He rubs his eyes with his fists. His face is clean shaven—after all of this, after everything, Chester has looked after him well enough to keep him groomed. Vaguely, this produces a dream-memory of a warm wet rag on his face in the morning, picking the rheum from his eyes and rinsing the dust from his pores, a soothing tune hummed in the background.
It's nightfall, and Chester is stoking a campfire away from the wagon, sprawling out sleeping places for them beside it. Matt slides out of the back of the wagon and lands unsteadily on his feet, walking with toes turned inward like a cowboy.
He examines Chester, who stands with his hip cocked out like a lame horse. He's wearing Matt's gunbelt. He isn't well-groomed. His face is stubbly and thin, like he hasn't eaten well lately. Dark rings of exhaustion encircle his eyes, and his mouth is heavy from uncharacteristic frowns. As he turns back to face Matt in the firelight, he appears older in some horrible way, not older the way a geriatric ages with time, but older the way a teenage boy drags his best friend's corpse off of a battlefield, older the way a mother sees her baby's singed socks after a housefire, older the way a widow receives a bill from the undertaker.
"Where are we?" Matt asks, clear this time.
Chester doesn't prevaricate again. "South of Live Oak County."
"How long has it been?"
"Couple weeks."
"We're making a slow pace."
"I been heading in zigzags and loops to throw our trail. Changing our rigs, too, keeping the path all crooked. Ain't no scouts nowhere near on us now."
Matt's feet grow steadier underneath him. "I forget you're half-Indian when you want to be."
He approaches a large canvas bag on the ground away from the fire and nudges it with his boot. Coins clink inside of it. Chester averts his gaze, guilty, as Matt pours out his belongings, some four hundred dollars and change. "Where did you get this?"
"I took it off Huggins. Five hundred dollars was what was on him. I knowed we was gonna need it, figuring you wasn't gonna be much too fit for horseback all fogged up. Seemed right to use the money to take care of you, since I figure Huggins likely got it from lyin' on ya."
Memory flickers with that first night after the trial when Chester returned with mud on his hands and blood spatter on his boots. "Did you kill Huggins and Samples?"
He stares into the flames. "I ain't never killed a man when I didn't have to."
"That doesn't answer my question." But Chester doesn't reply. Matt approaches him where he stands beside the fire. "We have to go back to Kansas."
"We ain't going back."
"Bill Hickok trusted you, and you made a fool out of him. I'm a convicted murderer. There are going to be rewards on our heads. Every lawman and wannabe bounty hunter in the United States is going to know our names and descriptions. We can run like a bunch of scared antelope as long as we like, but some day, somebody is going to find us, and it's going to be real ugly, and innocent people will die. It's foolish. We're going back."
Chester whips around to face him. "We ain't going back." His hands hang loose at his side, and for the first time, Matt has the idea that maybe Chester isn't carrying the gun to protect them.
"They're going to think you murdered those two men."
His eyes are glazed with tears. "I'd let 'em hang me tomorrow for killing them two crooks. I'd do it proud."
"Don't lie to yourself. You're scared."
"I'm scared plumb to death, and that ain't what I'm 'fraid of!" His breath hitches. Matt's memory flashes with the image of Chester doubled over outside the courthouse window, vomiting, driven sick and mad by the notion of Matt at the gallows. "We ain't going back. I ain't gonna let us."
"Give me that gun, Chester."
To his surprise, Chester takes off the gunbelt and hands it to him. He disarms himself readily. Matt stares at his crazed face in the orange light.
"It's yours."
Matt puts it aside. "We'll pack up and head back for Abilene in the morning."
His jaw sets. "Mr. Dillon, I done told you we ain't leaving here."
"Chester, you're not making any sense."
The punch comes out of nowhere. Matt falls on his ass, more out of surprise than force. Reflexively, he grapples at the air and drags Chester with him by his suspenders, tossing him to the side, where he hits the earth and produces a winded sound. That should be the last of it—Chester isn't a fighting man, and he's smart enough to know Matt is stronger than him, and they're friends. Neither of them wants to hurt the other.
But it's not. Chester lunges for him again, this time with both hands closed. Matt shoves him off and Chester bites him. He kicks off of the ground with his stiff leg, and they wrestle, rising dust into the air through a few minutes of rolling around, until Chester is pinned weakly underneath Matt's arms.
They're both gasping for air, coughing from the smoke when they fought too close to the fire, soot and dirt sticking to the tears and saliva and blood on their faces. Chester goes limp. He's given up.
Matt pushes off of him and sits a few feet away. "I don't know what's gotten into you—" Another blow to his face cuts him off as Chester launches at him again.
This scuffle doesn't last as long. A knee to the belly, a kick in the kidneys, a jab in the ribs. Matt gets pushed onto his back, so he kicks Chester off of him, where he falls and dashes his face on a rock, blood streaming into his eyes. He's blinded. He's still crawling, feeling his way to Matt, who immobilizes him with ease, a hand on each forearm to keep him from swinging again.
"Chester!" he snaps. "Face it! You're licked!"
He wheezes. "No." Drool runs down from his bruised lips. "You ain't goin'. Not while I'm alive." He coughs.
"That's ridiculous." Matt loosens his hold, and Chester blindly slaps at him again, so Matt resumes holding him down. He shakes him once, like he can rattle the sense back into his skull, since beating him isn't working. "Give it up!"
"No!" He makes a broken, wretched sound. "I'ma fight ya til you kill me. I'm 'onna…" He's dazed, blinking hard, trying to clear the coagulating blood from his eyes. "I ain't gonna quit."
"You've gotta quit. You can't win."
"I ain't wanting to win. You's…" He sobs. "You's goin' back to Kansas a killer, if you wanna go so bad. You ain't goin' back to hang as no innocent man. If'n you wanna go, you go having killed me, or you ain't goin'."
The fire crackles. Distantly, a coyote howls. The south Texas wind buffets over their bodies, one posed atop the other. As Matt shifts, Chester tenses underneath him, already prepared to jump again, and he knows it's true—Chester won't stop fighting until Matt has killed him. "Is that why you gave me the gun? So I could kill you easier?"
He closes his eyes. "You's a good friend to me, Mr. Dillon. You ain't gotta beat me to death with your hands. No reason—doin' that to yourself. 'S easier to shoot me."
"And if I let you go, you're gonna thump on me until I do it."
"You can knock me out. I'll fight when I wake up. I'll just… just keep doin' it til I'm dead."
"I told you to leave, Chester. I told you you didn't have to stay to watch."
Chester produces something between laughter and gagging. "Ain't the watching. It's the knowing." The wound on his face hasn't stopped bleeding, slicking his hair black in the darkness. "Ain't nobody hanging you while's I'm here. Ain't nobody—" He coughs, and then he doesn't finish his sentence.
The trickle of his blood and spit down his dirty face breaks something inside of Matt. He holds Chester's wrists tightly in his grasp, deliberating. Then, he swallows. The inside of his mouth tastes like copper. His tongue drags over a bleeding gash along the inside of his cheek, and he realizes Chester knocked out one of his teeth. "Okay," he agrees huskily. "Okay."
Chester hiccups.
"I'm gonna let you up now. Don't start thrashing again, alright? We're doing this your way." Only when he gets a muffled grunt of acknowledgment in response, he relinquishes his grasp on Chester's arms, and he sits up. "You've busted your face. Let me see that." Chester pulls himself up when Matt offers him a hand.
He can't see. Matt guides him beside the fire where he can examine the wound in the light, and he wets a handkerchief to wash the blood away from the gash, wrapping a cloth around his head tightly. When he closes his eyes, he's reluctant to open them again. His skin quivers with exertion like a horse twitching a fly from its flank. His teeth audibly chatter, and as Matt wipes the mess from his cheek, he flinches.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, Chester."
"Y'ain't hurting me none, Mr. Dillon." There's a stammer in his words. He holds still as Matt roughly combs the muddy clumps of blood from his hair with his fingers. "Boy, 'm… M' head's spinning something fierce."
Their blankets are prepared between the wagon and the fire, so Matt scoots over there, sitting him on his bedroll. "I didn't see that stone. I wouldn't have let you gash your face if I had."
"'S alright, I knowed you wasn't tryin'a hurt me too bad, I knowed…" Chester sighs pathetically, his voice shaking. "Mr. Dillon, I mean it. I ain't goin' back to Kansas. You's got me licked right now, but it don't matter, you can bind and gag me and I'll find a way—"
"I know," Matt reassures. "I know." He wipes Chester's eyes until they're light enough for him to open again, all bloodshot and fatigued. "We're not going. I won't force you." He hangs his head with relief. Matt rests a gingerly hand on the small of his back. He winces, but then he eases into the touch, leaning over, like it's the first gentle thing he has known in years. He starts to cry, burying his face in his gravel-lined palms, and Matt supports him around the waist to keep him from collapsing, waiting for the storm to pass.
He wipes away his tears and snot with his sleeve.
"Why did you kill Huggins and Samples?"
Sapped, he trembles. "Huggins was on a drunk when's I tried to talk to him. Busted a bottle and come at me. He'd got me all cornered, Mr. Dillon, I ain't had a choice. I put my hands on his throat so's he wouldn't yell, and he kept swinging that bottle, and I jus' held on til he quit." Another tear rolls down his cheek. "I got no good out of killin' a mean old drunk."
"But you got some good out of killing Samples, didn't you?"
"I ain't proud of it. He drawed first. But if he hadn't, I—I think I'd've shot him, anyway." Chester gulps with a dry throat. Matt gives him the water bottle, from which he takes a single drink. "I bought that horehound 'nd cards at the store, made sure a bunch of people seen me, so's nobody would suspect nothing of me. Bought a wagonload of sandbags, said I had to take 'em out to help some sodbusters. Then I sunk their bodies in the river."
All that mud on his boots. In the river, it would take weeks or months for the bodies to resurface, and by then, they would be unrecognizable. No one would ever know Samples or Huggins were murdered; there would be no proof of anything, except that they merely disappeared. Chester didn't run when they vanished, and people had seen him in Abilene, including Wild Bill Hickok. Matt doesn't believe there is a such thing as a perfect murder, but he thinks Chester has come close.
"This is against the law," Matt reminds him in a voice that is almost tender.
"You's the best friend I ever had. I ain't got no use for any law that'd see you hanged."
A distinct, feral pang wages a war through Matt's gut. He scans him up and down. "Chester." He blinks back at him, clear and innocent. "Bill asked me if I killed Lou Price. Before he testified, he asked me. He made me tell him I didn't do it." He studies the lines of his spent face, all slack but rapt with attention. "You never asked. You did all this, and you still haven't asked me if I killed him." Chester holds his gaze, lips slightly parted. "Is that because you know I didn't do it? Or is it because you don't care if I did or not?"
His tongue dashes over his bruised, swollen mouth. "It don't matter none now," he whispers. He doesn't look away, though color tints his cheeks.
The pit of his stomach flips. Chester is leaning skewed to one side with exhaustion, so Matt guides him to rest his head on his lap, which he does without protest. "Bill said a seed of doubt planted deep enough eventually grows roots."
"Seeds only grow roots where you water 'em." Chester's voice is muffled by the curve of Matt's thigh beneath his cheek.
His hand lands in his dirty hair. It feels like an anchor, a tether, the last thing in his life that's real. With the lull of the crickets and cicadas and the whistling of a desert wind around them, they're floating in an unending fantasy world. "I wouldn't have asked you to do this. I wouldn't have wanted you to."
"I know."
"We can never go back from this."
"I know." Chester seems wholly at peace. He has wasted the distress out of his body, and now, he's nothing but a tired puddle of a man.
Matt stares across the dry horizon. "Where are we heading, then?"
"Mexico." He shivers. Matt adjusts a blanket over his shoulders. "There's one of them star-patterns down way south, Mr. Dillon, the—the conflagrations, Doc calls 'em."
"Constellations," Matt corrects quietly.
"Yeah. The southern cross. You's can only see it from real south spots, is what Doc says. 'Nd I've got a hankering to give it a good, long gander."
It's as good of a reason to go to a place as any Matt has ever heard. "I think you've earned the chance to look at some pretty stars as long as it pleases you, Chester." It doesn't settle the unease in the pit of his stomach, the vague sick notion that Chester killed for him, ruined his life to save him, and now is being driven only by stars like ancient sailors on a rugged ocean that will certainly drown them with the first storm.
Chester rests easily.
Only after Chester falls asleep with his head in his lap, curled comfortably on his side, Matt allows himself to weep.