Doctor Who: The Gunfighters (11 page)

And the crowd groaned likewise, because they’d heard it...

However, it’s an ill wind, et cetera... because, in so doing, they conveniently covered the sound of Wyatt’s galloping the final straight, to the tree; swiping the unsuspecting Phineas sideways with his Buntline Special –

pistol-whipping, it’s called, a favourite technique of his, by all accounts – and finally cutting through Steven’s rope...

Game, set, and match!

‘Now then, Sinners,’ he purred, ‘shall we continue the discussion from here? No? Then how about: the next man as moves, gets it? You gonna be first, Billy?’

But fire-eating Billy had his excuse-me right to hand...

‘If you wasn’t wearing a badge, Marshal!’ he explained, and left the threat tactfully unspoken.

‘That’s
why
I wear it,’ said Wyatt, modestly.

‘And if you wasn’t caught in a cross-fire, Billy,’ called Bat as he breathed heavily along the double barrels of a shotgun. ‘Lynchin’ party’s over, folks!’

Well, that’s about all there was to it, really. The crowd agreed that there seemed to be nothing much to wait around for; and began to drift back where it came from, wondering why in hell things always turned out like this.

Although, to do him justice, Ike seemed disposed to stick it out for a while longer.

Wyatt discouraged him.

‘All’s left to do is talk big an’ look foolish, Clanton – get goin’!’

‘Not without Phin, I don’t,’ said the chap-fallen bad-man.

‘Your brother ain’t available, right now,’ explained Wyatt, ‘on account, he’s under arrest. Attempted hangin’,’

he elaborated further. ‘Less’n you’re fixin’ to join him, I’d go home to your Pa. You too, Billy.’

The brothers looked at each other. Yes, that was a thought – Pa! The prospective mayor wasn’t going to like this!

To add to their pleasure, Charlie the bar-keep now approached, bearing tidings...

‘Mr Clanton, sir – an’ you too Mr Clanton: I gotta tell you – that ain’t Doc Holliday that’s bein’ held in there!’

Well, this may not have been the anti-climax Ike had been fearing – he’d already had that one – but this was another. And it was a beauty!

He narrowed his eyes, accordingly.

And so did the Marshal...

17

It was Wyatt’s inclination to tell Charlie to mind his own damn’ business; but what with keeping a grip on the buffaloed Phineas, holding a gun where it would do most good; and, simultaneously, trying to explain to Steven how you untie a running bow-line, – for pity’s sake! – he was...

Well, you can’t be everywhere, can you?

‘What gives you that idea, Charlie?’ Ike asked. ‘You been at the sauce bottle?’

Well he had... but even so...

‘Because it’s like the old guy kept tryin’ to tell you,’ he announced. ‘He ain’t by no means the same Doctor... as...

as this other Doctor, whom he ain’t! Seems like he’s another mess o’ hog-swill entirely!’

‘You funnin’, Charlie?’ asked Billy. ‘Because if so, I’m fresh out o’ laughs!’

‘Tain’t no laughin’ matter,’ denied Charlie, ‘on account this altogether different Doctor, Holliday by name, the
real
one, he’s jest been in my bar... an’ if I’m drunk, as you so kindly imply, then your friend Seth Harper’s still alive...

which ain’t so! Holliday shot him clean as a dude’s trousers. Fastest thing I ever saw – which is pretty fast, considerin’ what goes on in my place, since you boys hit town! So, I jest thought I’d best stop you gettin’ up against the law, all over nothin’...’

‘Thanks!’ said Ike, grimly. ‘We’re surely obliged...’

And Charlie blew – secure in the satisfaction of a job well done...

‘So,’ said Billy, ‘you knew all along the old guy weren’t Holliday, did you, Earp? That’s clear contrary to the natural, clear course of dad-blasted justice, ain’t it now?’

‘Try sayin’ Marshal, and rememberin’ it, too! I don’t have to answer to you, Billy. I’ll justify my actions to the Citizens’ Committee, if I have to. Now, walk away, while you still got the equipment!’

‘I ain’t takin’ no orders from no sanctimonious...’

‘Leave it, Billy,’ counselled his brother. ‘Cussin’ ain’t called for. Marshal’s jest about all through givin’ orders!

By the time Pa gits through with him, he’ll lose his badge so fast, it’ll... it’ll...’

But Phineas was in no condition to help him find
le mot
juste
. So, mumbling mechanically, the boys backed up and off, towards where the sunset would have been if it hadn’t been over.

Where the sunset used to be was now the Clanton Ranch; and the difference was immediately apparent. For one thing, whereas the sunset had been a golden testament of glory, and poets had said so, the ranch fell somewhat short of this high standard in several respects, and everybody said so. ‘Squalid’ was the word they generally used. Pa Clanton claimed he kept it that way in memory of his wife, God rest her tongue, whose early death had followed hard upon her premature burial, back in ‘75.

You could still see her temporary grave near the blocked over-flow from the hog-pound, if you weren’t careful; and along about now of an evening, it was the old man’s habit to wander gladly down there, and get in some spitting practice – a thing he hadn’t hardly got enough of when she was alive.

It was at these times of solitude he would remember his early pioneering days, when he had trecked West to carve out a false name for himself, far from her father’s shotgun; and also with what soulless devotion she and the Pinkertons’ men had finally tracked him down to this blessed corner of nowhere.

But now he was alone in the world; apart, that is to say, from his four fine boys – no, three now, he chuckled to remember – who seemed to be doing their damndedest to remind him of her. Still, they were all he’d got, Heaven help him; so, tossing a bunch of poison-ivy onto the hallowed mound, he strode – briskly, for a man with his unpleasant diseases – back to the chill intimacy of his old colonial kitchen – so called, because the termites were into it in a big way – to see if they were home yet.

Rightly speaking, he considered, there should have been big doin’s in town this day; and, by now, Holliday should be gracing a trestle-table in the cold-store at Jackson’s Hardware – so often pressed into service as ante-room to the infernal hot-spot.

And with the demon dentist thus occupied, why, the way would be clear for an undisturbed final confrontation with the more properly constituted authorities; for Earp and Masterson, he judged, were now all that stood between him and the mayoral parlour, with its bright vistas of graft and civic corruption, plus a complimentary pass to Ma Golightly’s.

So he was a mite discountenanced to find no-one in residence bar his yellow hound dog, which was gnawing a disused buffalo skull on the groaning table. Absent-mindedly, he removed man’s best friend with a bull-whip; whereupon it bit him affectionately on one of his numbed ankles, en route for the Great Outdoors. They understood each other, these two – having many points in common.

He was therefore engaged in plastering varmint-fat on the probably rabid cicatrice, when he heard the sound for which his ears were already half-cocked – that of horses’

hooves in something of a hurry; and he limped over to the mullioned arrow-slit, his over-crowded countenance a-gleam with dubious welcome.

Three horses cantered into the dung-encrusted yard – a feature of the property commonly referred to as the unpleasance – but only, he was puzzled to note, two riders.

The medium-sized, bearded boy was missing.

‘Where’s Phin?’ he enquired, after a recount. ‘Stayed on in town fer a few laughs, an’ such?’

Damn! Ike had been hoping the subject would not be touched on till after a few words of conventional greeting.

‘Well, I’ll tell you...’ he said, dismounting abruptly, and picking himself up. ‘Or maybe Billy here would rather... ?’

Billy waived the privilege. ‘You’re the eldest,’ he said,

‘best get it over...’

They edged into the house past Pa’s doom-exuding bulk, and settled themselves side by side on the parlour hitching-rail. They put Pa in mind of two turkey-buzzards at a christening...

‘Go on,’ he said, grimly, ‘where’s he at this time?’

‘Properly speaking,’ said Ike, ‘I cain’t rightly say; but its a fair bet that by now he’s in the gaol-house.’

‘Reckon he’d have sent word hisself,’ contributed Billy, ‘’cept that he was handicapped by havin’ been a mite pole-axed...’

‘That’s it,’ agreed Ike, ‘same like a herd-bull in a stockyard.’

‘Oh?’ said Pa, putting himself under restraint, and counting to five with some difficulty. ‘And by whom if I may put the question?’

‘Earp,’ said Ike.

‘Put your goddamned hand in front of your mouth when you do that!’ said his parent. And then light dawned, with the beginning of a bright side... ‘You mean, Wyatt took him in fer killin’ Holliday? That’s it now, ain’t it?’

‘Well now, Pa – I cain’t tell you that, because it ain’t rightly so.’

He had read all about George Washington, and his little hat-check cutie; and he admired the man in consequence...

‘You see, time Phin got hisself incommoded, we was seemingly after the wrong guy...’

‘Go on,’ said Pa. ‘You tell it, Billy.’

‘There you go, Pa,’ said Billy, ‘An’ time we-all was adoin’ that, the
right
guy – the
real
Holliday, that is – was engaged in shootin’ the dyin’ night-shades out of Seth Harper!’

‘That’s about all really, Pa,’ Ike resumed; ‘’cept that I’d like to say, it could have happened to anyone. You got to give us that...’

Pa knew what he’d like to give them, but couldn’t rightly see any point in it at this juncture. ’Sides of which he was fresh out of wasp poison. No, comes a time when a father has to realise he’s accidentally sired a brood-pen full of pea-brained gophers; and all he can do then is make the best of it.

Nevertheless, he thought a word or two of some sort might be in season.

‘Seth Harper,’ he complained, ‘owes me money!’

‘Don’t rightly see how you aim to collect it...’ said Billy.

‘Seems like I done paid him all of one hundred confederate dollars to back you up, an’ get Holliday. An’

now that’s cash down the cess-pit, ain’t it?’

‘There you go!’ admitted Billy again.

‘Don’t keep sayin’ that! God knows where you pick up these expressions! So I tell you what you do now, ‘cause it seems a Pa has to look out fer his young-uns, regardless of lack of affection! I’m a-gonna give you five hundred more; an’ you will take that small fortune to procure me the services of a
real
gun-man. Go get me Johnny Ringo!’ he hissed.

The boys reeled with apprehension. ‘Johnny Ringo!

Now, just hold on there...’

‘Ringo rides alone, Pa – you know that!’ said Billy. ‘On account of no-one durst ride with him! So what makes you think as he’d throw in with us?’

‘Five hundred dollars says so,’ said Pa, confidently. ‘An’

seein’ it’s Ringo, I’d best made ’em Yankee dollars. Now –

go git him!’

‘Don’t rightly know where he’s at,’ objected Ike. ‘You know what that class of man is like? They ride the wild wind in search of new, blue yonders; where there’s no fence-posts, or whatever.’

‘Then ask around, boy – such time as I’ve still left you a tongue in your head! Seein’ as my union with your late Ma has been blessed with a litter of no-account, droop-eared lap-dogs, seems I require the services of a top-gun! So go git me Ringo,’ he persevered; and his voice rose to an apoplectic scream, just in time to add, ‘An’ git him here fast!’

So, realising he was serious, the boys made a boot-assisted exit, put their horses into rapid reverse, and went to ask around.

18

Crimson-fingered dawn was lighting the hoose-gow as with a blow-torch – for it was a fine morning – when the Doctor and Steven, aged by a night of twitching sleep in which dreams of tight neck-wear featured prominently, emerged from their respective cells to find Wyatt and Bat examining Phineas Clanton’s creased, Neanderthal skull with some distaste.

‘Is he conscious yet?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Difficult to tell,’ diagnosed Bat. ‘Looks like he may be alive; but, if so, he ain’t gonna enjoy it for a while...’

‘Really, Marshal,’ protested the Doctor, ‘was it necessary to hit the man quite so hard?’

‘Yes, after all he was only going to hang me,’ said Steven. ‘Doctor, it wasn’t
your
neck in the noose last night.

I, for one, am very grateful to Mr Earp!’

‘I was only the instrument of Divine Justice, I reckon,’

demurred Wyatt, modestly. Over the years, he had grown used to accusations of police provocation, and had learnt to pay them no never mind. ‘Maybe you don’t realise how close that was out there? For what we did not receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

‘Well, of course we are,’ agreed the Doctor, ‘but surely there are other ways of doing these things?’

Wyatt considered the question. ‘’Spose I could’ve shot him – but seein’ I got no definite instructions to that effect from On High, I saw fit to let the transgressor have the benefit of Jehovah’s everlastin’ mercy...’

They looked at this evidence of Big J’s clemency, and decided to let the matter drop. After all, the Lord had done it now, and there it was...

Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘I fear that my friend and I will not be present to witness the outcome of this unfortunate affair. As soon as we have collected Dodo from the hotel, we must be on our way.’

‘Well, Hallelujah!’ said Wyatt. ‘Maybe once you’re gone, the town’ll settle down some.’

And so, with mutual expressions of goodwill and relief, they parted – but only for the time being...

Because little did they know that an hour previous to this valedictory chat, a stranger had clinked and jingled his menacing way into the Last Chance Saloon where he had taken up the position at the bar so recently occupied by the late Seth Harper.

And you could say he filled it better, at that; on account of this weren’t no ordinary two-bit, snake-eyed, backshooting delinquent – no, sir! Not by a vulture’s gut, it weren’t!