Doctor Who: The Gunfighters (8 page)

back to my room... An’ that’s where I’ll be if anyone wants me,’ she added, with a glance from beneath her half-mast lashes at Steven, who chose to ignore her, having quite enough to panic over at the moment, without any of
that
nonsense... And, disappointed, Kate oscillated up the stairs.

‘Well, if that don’t beat all,’ said Phineas, referring not to her retreating silhouette, which left nothing to the imagination, but to the recent events, which did.

‘It figures,’ said Ike, as near to thoughtfully as he would ever get. ‘Earp couldn’t take us in for nothin’, so he got the Doc out of trouble, like always.’

‘He weren’t in no trouble,’ objected Billy. ‘He made Seth look right foolish. You should’ve let me handle it, like I wanted!’

‘Don’t know so much about that,’ said Seth. ‘You boys didn’t look a lot like the James gang, not from where I was standing. More like the Mariposa Glee Club,’ he concluded.

‘Well,’ said Steven; ‘if there’s nothing else?’

‘Sit down!’ said Ike.

‘Right down!’ added Phineas.

‘Jest stay where you are!’ said Billy, pursuing a line of his own, ‘whiles I get us our hardware...’

Too late Steven remembered that their guns were now once more readily available...

Well you can’t think of everything, can you?

Arriving back in her sewing-room, our smouldering songstress was not best pleased to find it already occupied by the rival soubrette; and she was downright chagrined to hear the latter enquiring of Doc Holliday just how long he proposed to keep her there.

Kate was understandably more interested to learn just how long he had kept her there already, and enquired as much, with a wealth of illustrative detail intended to convey what would likely occur if his answer failed to satisfy her in any particular.

Dodo blushed, and Doc prevaricated.

‘Why, Kate,’ he admonished, ‘you know me! Would I ever be a party to that kind of actionable misdemeanour?’

‘You’re durn tootin’!’ commented his outraged inamorata, without a great deal of logic. She removed a boot, and prepared to press the heel into service as a stiletto. It was a large boot, as we have already noticed, and Doc looked apprehensive...

‘Now, put that thing away, Kate, before it goes off! I was jest explainin’ to the little lady here...’

‘Seems to me there’s been a sight too much goddam explainin’ took place around here for one night! Know what you are, you ornery, crawlin’ apology fer a ring-tailed, downright rabid racoon?’

‘I know; I know right well, Kate – I read your note. I have already registered your sentiments; an’ that’s why I come a-runnin’...’

‘So’s you could shack up with someone else, before sun-down caught you lonely? Didn’t take you long, did it?’

‘Kate, I came so’s I could protect you from your ill-advised an’ head-strong ways! Know what them Clantons is likely to do to a defenceless woman?’

She didn’t recognise the description.

‘Seems to me like it was them as needed protectin’! I took care of the whole thing; whilst you was a-canoodlin’

with your fancy piece of small-time, low-tone, high-falutin’

jail-bait here! Makes me puke!’ she added, to explain her attitude.

Dodo was about to object to this character summary with some heat, when Holliday forestalled her. He didn’t want a war of the wild-cats on his hands, on top of everything else...

‘So who was it took care of Seth Harper, then, since you’re so all-fired smart?’

He let the question float in the air; where Kate gave it her grudging attention.

‘That was you?’

‘Not only a privilege, but a pleasure,’ said Doc modestly.

‘S’pose you was too busy conductin’ the Ragtime Four to notice?’

‘Then, for Pete’s sake, why didn’t you get him between the eyes, like a feller should?’

‘Oh, come on, Kate – be fair! I mean, have you
seen
his eyes? There just ain’t rightly room for a bullet between

’em. They kind of overlap,’ he explained to Dodo. "Sides, if I’d truly killed him, what would’ve happened to the old guy you’re so dad-blasted fond of? He’d have been deader’n a prime hog came Thanksgivin’! The Clantons may be slow, but they’re accurate...’

‘Which old guy?’ asked Dodo, who had been out of the swim of events for some time.

‘Why, Honey,’ said the somewhat ameliorated Kate, ‘a real nice old guy, who came in to get a tooth fixed.’

Dodo blanched. ‘But that must have been my friend, the Doctor!’ she deduced. ‘Why would they want to kill
him
?’

‘On account they took him fer Sir Galahad over there,’

explained Kate, nodding towards Holliday with her bosom,

‘who had the kindness to set him up for it, the bastard!’ she added.

‘Then where is he now? I must go to him!’

‘I’d not advise it, Sugar,’ said Kate, her heart of brass now more or less won over, ‘seein’ as how Wyatt Earp’s jest got through arrestin’ him.’

‘Arrested? But what on earth for?’

"Cause Wyatt didn’t see fit to disabuse ’em of the notion that he was Holliday.’

‘But why?’

‘God knows, Molasses,’ Kate admitted, ‘but I’d say it was a fair bet that, like always, he was lookin’ out for his fine friend, here. Kind of drawin’ the Clantons’ fire.’

‘Onto the Doctor? But that’s awful!’

‘Now don’t you go worryin’ none, little lady,’ interjected Holliday. ‘If he’s with Wyatt, he couldn’t be no safer. Only man as I ever respected,’ he explained.

Now that was a strange friendship: born of favours more or less accidentally received in the course of mayhem and general carnage, he supposed. But there it was. And, oddly, though they were, as you might say, on the opposite sides of the law, it had lasted through a score of cow-towns they had tamed together.

So now... ‘What do you ladies say to a little three-handed game of chance?’ he enquired.

After all, he didn’t want to waste the entire evening...

13

Meanwhile, the Doctor, still spluttering with inexorable indignation at his captors, was having it firmly and forcibly explained to him that if he so much as put his interfering snout outside the gaol-house before Holliday could be persuaded to leave town – when the matter of mistaken identity could safely be resolved to universal rejoicing and jocular back-slapping – then, certain as a possum goes with cold potatoes, he would get it shot from his fool face by four of the toughest characters as ever put pincer to toe-nail.

‘Don’t mistake the Clantons none,’ warned Bat. ‘Just because, for some cock-a-mamie reason, you got away with it the once! O.K. – maybe they’re a mite sponge-witted an’

slow-spoken to your way of thinkin’, but that don’t decelerate ’em none when it comes to backshootin’ an’

side-swipin’ an’ such! An’ fer another thing, they got Seth with ’em – an’ he’s about the slimiest crittur ever got trod by human foot!’

This was a long speech for Bat, and he appealed to Wyatt to continue the argument...

‘Main thing is though,’ said Jehovah’s sidekick, ‘that they got their Pa behind ’em – which is a situation that personally I would never seek. Because the said Pa Clanton is jest about the nastiest
pater familias
a growin’ boy could go in holy terror of! An’ he ain’t about to relish this laughable little set-back, but no-how. Now, his business with Doc Holliday is kind of a private matter concernin’

the premature demise of his eldest. But his business with me is that I claim the God-given right to stop him takin’

over the whole county for his personal purposes – which are downright unpleasant!’

‘Rustlin’,’ said Bat.

The Doctor listened – but couldn’t hear anything himself, so relaxed again.

‘An’ horse thievin’, an’ stage hold-ups, an’ bullion robbery,’ continued Bat; ‘an’ they do say,’ he lowered his voice, ‘that he’s defrauded the tax-office a time or two...’

‘Too many slap-happy returns,’ confirmed Wyatt, ‘an’

him standin’ for mayor, an’ all!’

‘As well as murder, an’ all,’ continued Bat.

‘And all? And all what?’ asked the Doctor.

‘The feller drinks!’ said Wyatt.

‘Well now, Wyatt, so does Holliday,’ objected Bat. ‘You got to admit that...’

‘That’s different,’ said Wyatt. ‘He’s my friend.’

And he set to cleaning his revolver with a consecrated oil-rag...

And simultaneously with this succinct exposition of the
casus belli,
the boys in the bar-room were busy scaring the hell out of that disenchanted dude, Jazz-fingers Steven Regret, late of the intergalactic force for good, and dedicated to fighting evil in all its forms.

The trouble was, he hadn’t encountered it in
this
form before; not combined with what seemed to him to be boneheaded, crass stupidity!

‘For God’s sake!’ he exploded at length. ‘Why can’t you listen? For the last time, I tell you that man is not Doc Holliday! I don’t care
what
Earp said – he’s nothing like him! I don’t suppose,’ he added, not being entirely sure on that point.

‘He sure enough shoots like him,’ said Seth, ruefully.

‘Sure ‘nough does!’ agreed the others. ‘Fast? We ain’t never seen nothin’ like it! We said so at the time, if you remember?’

‘But
he
didn’t fire that shot! He probably wouldn’t know how.’

‘Haw! Haw!’ they went, with subtle sarcasm – rather like a rookery in the Springtime.

‘In any case, the bullet came from upstairs – I was watching!’

‘Well, Glory be!’ admired Phineas, ‘He got eyes like a bald eagle, this feller! He can watch bullets come an’ go like they was flappin’ their wings!’

This was his best yet; and there was a short pause for refreshment, while they congratulated him.

‘Never mind all that,’ said Steven, irritably. ‘You’ll simply have to take my word for it.’

They fell about some more.

‘Because what I’ve got to do now is get him out of gaol...’

‘Stop it!’ they begged. ‘Oh, please – no!’

And they wiped their streaming noses on the table-cloth.

‘I don’t see what’s so funny – the Marshal had absolutely no right to arrest him!’

‘So what you’re goin’ fer to do, I take it,’ said Ike, when he felt better, ‘is you’re... oh, dear... you’re gonna walk right down into that there abode of the righteous, gun down Earp and Masterson... an’ then you an’ your friend, who ain’t by no means Doc Holliday, is jest gonna ride your sweet way outa town? Is that it?’

‘Well, no – not exactly,’ Steven admitted. ‘No, I shall reason with them. I mean, they’re both intelligent men –

they’re bound to see there’s just been a misunderstanding...

I should think...’

‘Boys,’ said Ike, ‘seems to me like our young pal here could use a little help.’

‘Sure could,’ the rest agreed.

‘You see, Mr Regret,’ continued Ike, ‘to
my
way of thinkin’, it looks like we all got us the same problem: namely, how to restore your partner to the fresh, pure air of liberty...’

‘That’s right,’ Phineas agreed. ‘So’s we can blast the livin’ day...’

‘Shut up, Phin! So’s we can have a little talk, an’ find out who he
really
is. Because, if he really
ain’t
the Doc, like you say... well, we wouldn’t want to see no miscarriage of justice, would we, boys?’

Here he winked laboriously at all brothers within eye-shot.

‘Certainly wouldn’t,’ they assured him. ‘That would be too damn’ bad!’

‘So we got to think us of a plan.’

‘I’ve been trying to,’ said Steven.

‘Then you can lay off right now – ‘cause I just thought me of a dilly! It’s simple, it’s effective; and furthermore, it’s traditional! You boys know what I’m talkin’ about?’

They didn’t.

‘Well then, look-ee here: all we gotta do is get us a rope.’

They liked that.

‘Then we tie it round the neck of Mr Regret, here; an’

we lead him, like he was a hound-dog, to the hangin’-tree in front of the gaol-house. So then, if his friend
don’t
come out, to take his place...’

‘What?’ gulped Steven.

‘Why then, we’re simply goin’ to have to pretend to lynch you...’

‘Pretend?’

‘Why sure; unless somethin’ happens to get us riled –

like maybe, Wyatt an’ Bat tearin’ into us with shotguns, or some such... but no – they’d never do that, with you standin’ right there in front of us, would they now?’

‘Suppose they do?’

‘Well then,’ said Ike, reasonably, ‘in that far-fetched eventuality, we’d jest have to review the situation some.

Play it by ear,’ he explained, ‘where the knot’ll be...’

He sat back; like Napoleon rolling up the map of Europe. Yes, he was pleased with his plan.

‘Reckon it’ll work?’ demanded Billy.

‘Why, boy, don’t you ever read nothin’ bar Wells Fargo catalogues? Of course it’ll work. It always works. A man has to come out to save his friend, don’t he? Irrespective of any small, personal risk? I tell you, it’s traditional! So what do you all say?’

By a majority of four to one, Charlie abstaining, the motion was carried; and, mumbling something about frogs, Phineas lumbered off to find them a hempen neck-tie.

14

Upstairs, there was something of a strained atmosphere, as Dodo counted her winnings – or raked them towards her, like they say. She had learned all about poker at her finishing school; and the lessons had included a few modern refinements unknown to Doc Holliday, who was sore as a bear in a bee-tree in consequence.

‘Tarnation blazes!’ he snarled, having rejected his first choice of exclamation out of deference to the all-female company. ‘Ma’am, it would ill behove me to accuse a well-brought-up little lady, like your sweet self, of concealin’

wildies in her unmentionables, but...’

‘Then don’t!’ said Dodo. ‘Put up, or shut up! Want some more?’

‘Lady, I
got
no more! You jest cleaned me out! Reckon I’ll have to step down to the bar for a spell, and replenish my resources from the pockets of the sportin’ fraternity...’