Doctor Who: The Gunfighters (2 page)

‘So I take it, Mr Buntline, that at your tender age you may not have heard of time travel... or even, so help me, of the TARDIS? Well, like I say, it ain’t that easy to understand: but the TARDIS, if you’ll kindly believe me, was – and is, for all I know – a kind of four-wheel buggy designed for ridin’ every sort of direction through eternity, without much decent respect for the laws of physics. And this other Doctor feller I was tellin’ you about, he drives it back an’ forth through the star-spangled centuries, like it was a rodeo-bull got loose in Jackson’s Hardware Store! It’s a fact! Never seems to know quite where he’ll land up next!

And back in 1881, by golly, it was Tombstone, Arizona –

where the poor old buzzard got hisself taken for me!’

At this point Doc Holliday broke off to remark that it was an unprintable pity if a dying man couldn’t get a drink around here; so it would pleasure him some if I’d kindly oblige with the bottle...

I passed him his cure-all; and was, in fact, happy to do so – because, from where I’d been swallowing, the brew tasted like a blend of panther-fat and snake-oil. And while he was occupied with it, I risked raising a doubtful eyebrow. I mean, time travel? And what was it – the TARDIS?

Another
Doctor? Oh, come
on
!

But still and all, this wasn’t the sort of craven attempt to shuffle sideways out of responsibility that I could easily associate with John H. Holliday – or, leastways, with what I’d always heard about him. The coldest killer the West had ever seen – well, maybe. But always a gentleman with it, so Wyatt had told me. A man with a healthy dislike for facing the music; but never one to deny that he’d written the tune; or called it, either, come to that! So why would he start trying to fool me at this time of his life? Or of his death, rather – because you could tell he wasn’t long with us by the way his drink kept glazing over.

So I went on listening to his crazy-sounding story for the rest of that afternoon; while the whisky sank lower in the bottle – and in another he drew from a shoulder-holster, round about tea-time – until, you know, I finally believed him! Yes, sir, I did; and I make so bold as to hope that you will, too. Because it explains a deal of stuff that had just never seemed to add up in the other accounts I’d heard from so-called eye-witnesses – who’d probably never been nearer to the O.K. Corral than the railhead at Abilene!

And so, friends, here follows:

‘A True and Full Account

of

The Gunfight at The O.K. Corral,

And of Events leading Thereto;

As told to me, Ned Buntline,

In the Terminal Ward of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, by

Doctor John H. Holliday,

Dental Surgeon, Gambler, and Gun-Man,

Knife-Fighter, Con-Artist and Southern Gentleman.’

And Liar? Oh, surely not...!

1

To hear Holliday tell it, life on board the TARDIS can’t have been all candied yams and sassafras at the best of times; what with one thing and another, such as alien life forms cluttering up the cuspidors, and so forth. But when the Doctor had toothache, it became downright intolerable...

‘It’s no use,’ he groaned, ‘I simply have to find a dentist before we move another millenium!’

Steven and Dodo looked at each other in alarm.

Difficult to find a decent one anywhere in an emergency –

never mind a millenium... and then there’d probably be a waiting list.

‘Haven’t you got any pain-killers in the lab?’ asked Steven. ‘Something to tide you over till we get... wherever we’re going?’

‘My dear boy, amongst my supplies I have everything we could possibly need to counteract the effects of all death-rays from alpha to omega; devices for the instantaneous resetting of broken bones; and specifics to counteract cellular mutation... but for some reason I neglected to pack any aspirin! No, the tooth will just have to be extracted...’

‘Shall I have a go?’ said Dodo, helpfully. ‘I once did a first-aid course at school... not very well, though...’ she admitted.

‘Certainly not!’ snapped the Doctor. ‘In any case, I’m sure the curriculum did not include the more sophisticated techniques of dental surgery. I fear there is nothing for it but to land at once.’

‘Yes – but where?’ said Steven.

‘It doesn’t matter!’ the Doctor agonised. ‘Wherever there is some form of vertebrate life, there will be teeth –

and where there are teeth, there will be... oh... ouch!’ And he reeled over to the control panel.

The dials wavered uncertainly. They’d been through all this before.

‘But look here,’ objected Steven, ‘supposing there’s only
in
-vertebrate life when we get there? It would be just like you to land us on Jupiter or somewhere, where everything’s gaseous or liquid – you know, like those great, nebulous jelly-fish things we met on... where was it?... with poisonous what-nots...’

‘
Don’t
!’ shuddered Dodo.

‘Quite right, Dodo. Don’t you presume to lecture me on intergalactic biology, my boy! I know perfectly well what I’m doing...!’

‘Makes a pleasant change...!’ muttered Steven, fortunately inaudibly.

In any case, the Doctor was already clutching at an apparently haphazard selection of levers with the air of a demented xylophonist, who finds he’s brought along the wine list instead of the score.

‘Don’t you think,’ said Dodo, without much hope, ‘it would be better to wait until... ?’

But whatever eventuality she anticipated, it was already too late. For the TARDIS had materialised.

They looked out upon an unprepossessing landscape. To start with, it was raining heavily. And even had it not been, the outskirts of Tombstone, Arizona in 1881, were not such as to qualify for an architect’s award. Too little thought, the adjudicators would probably have felt, had been given to environmental considerations. Mind you, the town did blend in with its surroundings – but since these were of mud, that hardly constituted an advantage.

However, the Doctor was as jubilant as if he’d just discovered El Dorado, the shining city of legend; and furthermore, caught it living up to expectations in a big way.

‘There you are!’ he crowed. ‘What did I tell you?

Civilisation at last!’

‘Civilisation?’ Steven and Dodo sought unhopefully for some small evidence of Humanity’s widely advertised rise from barbarism, and found it wanting.

With typical unerring accuracy, the TARDIS appeared to have homed in somewhere to the unsavoury rear of a disused livery stable – and one which had not been left entirely as a horse would wish to find it.

The place had atmosphere, all right; but they rather wished it hadn’t. They could have breathed better in...

well, in the ammonia swamps of Alpha Centauri, for instance – and that was saying something!

Through the leaning door of the premises could be seen a distant, straggling vista of sagging shacks and sloping adobes, which even the shrewdest property speculator could only have described as offering ample scope for instant demolition. But if he ever had, then unfortunately he had found no takers. Because there it still stood, idling into corruption, like, as Steven put it, a souvenir copy of the Slough of Despond.

‘Oh, come on, Steven,’ said Dodo, ‘at least we’re back home...’

He looked at her in astonishment.

‘So this is where you come from, is it? Explains a lot!’

‘Oh, really!’ she expostulated. ‘Just for once, can’t you try to look on the bright side?’

‘Very well, you point to it – then I’ll look at it. It’ll be a pleasure!’

‘At all events,’ interrupted the Doctor, hastily, ‘the inhabitants are obviously at an advanced stage of development...’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Look,’ he said triumphantly, ‘there’s a wheel! At least they’ve discovered that!’

It would have been difficult for them not to. Quite a number of these triumphs of ingenuity lay about the place

– most of them with spokes missing, but nonetheless indubitably wheels!
And
broken-down buggies, there were;
and
discarded horseshoes, wrapped in their own rust. The fact is, as you will have gathered by now, they had landed slap-bang in the middle of the O.K. Corral – and there was even a signboard, hanging sideways from one bent rail, to prove it.

‘Whoopee!’ said Dodo. ‘We’re in a Western!’

United for once, her two friends glared at her...

2

And while all this was going on, life – or what passed for it

– was moving on its sinister way through the thriving hell-hole about them.

For the three surviving Clanton boys were riding into town. Reading from major to minor, their names were Ike, Phineas and Billy – and they didn’t care a damn who knew it! They wanted people to know, you hear? And to emphasise this point, Billy even went so far as to rear his horse in a way he’d seen it done somewhere, and fire his initials into the ‘Gone to Lynching’ sign on the sheriff’s office.
Not
having seen it done anywhere, the horse sank to its haunches in a puddle, which rather spoiled the effect; but still, he’d made his point – and Ike clicked his tongue reprovingly.

‘Now, why for d’you want to do a fool thing like that?’

he enquired, tonelessly. ‘Save your slugs for Doc Holliday, boy!’

‘I ain’t scared of Holliday,’ asserted this junior all-American gun-slinger. ‘Reckon I can take him any time!’

Impressed, Phineas parted his beard, and spoke through it. ‘You hear that, Ike? Brother Billy here ain’t scared!

Haw! Haw!’ he added, unkindly.

‘Nobody said you was scared, boy; not that I recall.

Brother Reuben, now, he weren’t scared any. But that didn’t stop Holliday fillin’ him full of holes as a...’ He sought for a picturesque simile. He failed. ‘As a lawyer’s argument,’ he ended, lamely.

Hopefully, Phineas changed the subject. ‘So where do we meet up with Seth?’ he enquired, wanting to know.

‘Last Chance Saloon,’ answered Ike, thereby bringing a lick to all lips, except those of Billy – always a sullen boy.

‘What for we need the likes of Seth Harper?’ he grumbled, ‘I say we do the job ourselves.’

‘Pa’s payin’ him, that’s why. Pa says we work along with him. And what Pa says goes, rather than...’ he was still having trouble with his denouements... ‘rather than what you say!’ he finished, after some thought.

Dismounting, they entered the bar of the Last Chance Saloon – leaving their horses outside, as previously instructed on several occasions.

Perhaps a word here about this hostelry, famed though it may be in the lower class of obituary.

Well, it weren’t no plush-lined sleep-easy, with a cactus-court cat-gut ensemble, that’s for sure! And there weren’t no picture of your genial host and his lady on the occasion of their silver wedding behind the bar, neither. On account, your host – by name of Charlie – weren’t a mite genial; and his ladies came and went with monotonous irregularity.

No, what there was behind the bar, was a shot-up oil-painting of a fat blonde in her birthday rig. Sitting on a cloud, she was, being molested by a bunch of tear-away cherubs, who looked as if they’d been up several nights round a stud-game, and passing the nectar pretty free, at that.

It was that kind of place. Why, I declare, there used to be a song about it. Now, how did it go?

With rings on their fingers

And bells on their toes,

The gals come to Tombstone

In their high silk hose.

They’ll dance on the tables

Or sing you a tune,

For whatever’s in your pocket

At the Last Chance Saloon.

(And that’s putting it a mite delicate, I’d say...) There’s gamblers from Denver

And guns from the South,

And many a cow-poke

With a bone dry mouth.

So from midnight to morning

The bar’s going boom,

Till there’s blood upon the sawdust

In the Last Chance Saloon!

Got the picture, have you? Right. So let’s get back to the Clantons; who have just about disentangled themselves from the busted swing-doors by now, and spat out the fresh air they’d unavoidably inhaled on the way over...

Time they sashayed in, the place was a little on the empty side – and you couldn’t blame it! Firstly, Charlie was still sweeping up the teeth left over from last night’s hurrah; and, secondly, leaning on the bar as though it had given him some kind of argument, was a character of so villainous an appearance that you might have taken him for a film extra, waiting for an audition.

You’d have been wrong. This was the aforementioned Seth Harper; known to the sheriffs of five counties as portrait of the year. Not a top-class shootist, by no means; but say you wanted a friend shot in the back, and no questions asked, then he was your boy.

With some difficulty, he spoke. ‘You took your sweet time gettin’ here, Clanton. Holliday’s rig pulled into town afore noon.’

Ike hated criticism. ‘Rode out as soon as I got your wire figured,’ he said. ‘For Pete’s sake – “Holiday in Tombstone”! There’s two l’s in our kind of Holliday.

Thought at first it was from a tourist tout, or some such!

Anyways, the Doc’ll keep whiles a drink or three, I’d say...’

Billy’ swaggered forward, spoiling his effect once more –

this time by some temporary problem with his spurs. ‘Sure

‘nough will. Charlie – four bottles, fast!’

Seeing how the party was likely to develop, Ike felt he’d best get on with the introductions. ‘You boys know Snake-eyes Harper?’ he enquired.

They nodded, and said ‘Yup’. Seth didn’t. ‘Don’t you ever call me Snake-eyes, you hear? Last man called me that lost one of his own!’ And he blinked his scaly lids resentfully.

‘What’s he mean by that?’ asked Phineas, slowly. ‘I mean, when a man’s got eyes like... I mean, seems only natural you’d call him... Well, wouldn’t you?’

Ike intervened rapidly. ‘Sure, Seth, sure... Phineas here is only funnin’. Now, come on, Seth – we’re all friends here, ain’t we? Now, ain’t we all in this together?’