Doctor Who: The Gunfighters (9 page)

‘You stay where you are, Doc Holliday!’ said his beloved Kate, snapping like an angry garter. ‘The Clanton boys’ll likely still be infestin’ the place, an’ you promised me you’d stay out o’ trouble!’

‘Well now, you see, Kate, I also do have this dryness creepin’ up from my throat, an’...’

‘Sit

down! Less’n you give some spry sign of reformation, it’s all over between us!’

‘But I’d kind of calculated from your fratchetty manner as it
was
all over. An’ now you’re sayin’, unless I truly go to the Devil I cain’t
ever
be rid of you? Aw, come on, Kate: you know I got no dearer wish than to do like you say – if only you’d say it gentle! All I hanker after from now on, is you cookin’ an’ me eatin’ – you know that!’

Whereupon she softened somewhat; as women will, under the influence of such rosy-spoken tributes to their domestic know-how...

‘Times you really do melt a gal’s heart right down to gravy, you glib, smooth-talkin’ thimble-rigger, you! Never did rightly know which to choose between you an’ Turkey-Creek Johnson, till he got hisself hung,’ she reflected.

‘O.K. then, Sweet-talk, seein’ you’re that set on my victuals, did you take the stew off the stove, like I told you in my billet-doux?’

‘Damn!’ said Doc Holliday. And simultaneously remembering a bottle of rot-gut he’d secreted in the scalpel steriliser, he left the place by that same window wherein he came, and went to attend to it.

Following his nose, Doc readily traced the blackened repast to its ptomaine domain; and, having consigned the remains to a labour-saving crematory, he was about to rehydrate himself from the aforementioned germ-free bottle, when he was given pause by what felt like the mouth-piece of a cannon in the small of the back.

Now, who would do a thing like that – without first taking the obvious precaution of pulling the trigger, that is?

Only one man he knew would have the goddam nerve: and presently the gloomy, Revivalist tones of his assailant assured him that his supposition was correct...

‘Howdy, old child of darkness an’ sorrow,’ purred Wyatt. ‘Come to pass your time in confession to an old acquaintance?’

‘Well now,’ said Doc, ‘I ain’t much in the line of weepin’

or wailin’ these days, but with the gnashin’ of dentures I can surely oblige. An’ if n you’ll be so civil as to place that there weapon back in its leather receptacle, it’ll be a real pleasure to see you, Wyatt. Mind if I turn up the lamp, so I can refresh myself with a glimpse of them time-worn features?’

The Marshal offered no objection; and as the smoky flame illuminated the tobacco-stained appointments of the dream kitchen, he was pleased to see Holliday remove the point of a Bowie knife from the region of his fourth weskit button; and the two friends took cautious stock of each other.

It had been a long time, and there’d be a heap to discuss between them. Wyatt began the discussion.

‘I’d like it fine,’ he said, ‘if you was to get the hell out of town!’

‘An’ like hell I will!’ said Doc pleasantly. ‘Now, where’d I put that bottle? You’ll join me, Wyatt?’

‘Drink is an abomination to the Lord!’ declined Wyatt.

‘Wasn’t invitin’ Him, as I recall,’ said Doc, ‘but each to his own pizen, like they say. Now me, I can accomodate the occasional swig of abomination, without sufferin’ greatly.’

And he proceeded to prove it...

‘Long as you’re sober enough to ride,’ pursued Wyatt, grimly.

‘Now Marshal, when have you ever seen me drunk? The booze an’ I came to an amicable understandin’ some years gone: it don’t never back up on me, so long as I never let up on it! No, let me advise you Wyatt; it’s when you discontinue the lubrication that them crimson gophers part your scalp with a meat axe. Like they was jest doin’,’

he explained. ‘So if you’ll kindly excuse me, while I pacify

’em some...’

‘Don’t take all night about it, then; I mean what I say.’

Doc wiped his moustache with a surgical swab.

‘Can you please explain to me, Wyatt, why every son of the morning I meet gives me that self-same message? Bat Masterson, now – he started in on it before I’d fairly got here. An’ I’ve done nothin’ agin the law – well, not recent,’

he qualified.

‘Bat wants you out ‘cause he don’t like you: with me, it’s

‘cause I do. Comes to the same thing though, don’t it? So you’d best git!’

‘For pity’s sake, why? I jest opened this here much-needed clinic. An’ moreover, I aim to get married right soon; to a real fine... well, to a real woman, anyway!’

‘A Jezebel of Babylon,’ commented Earp.

‘No, a Kate Elder of Sourdust Creek,’ corrected Doc.

‘You probably know her. Most people do,’ he remembered, gloomily. ‘Big girl in boots.’

‘I seen her around some,’ confessed Wyatt. ‘Had the pleasure of removin’ her gun-belt only this evening.’

‘That strikes me as bein’ a mite familiar, when she’s an engaged party...’

‘An’ I’ve no objection to your takin’ her along with you, if such be your hell-bent inclination. But this thing’s your own fault, Doc: seemingly you set up this here other Doctor for a headstone he somehow side-stepped; an’ I cain’t keep him in the gaol-house forever; not till Judgement Day neither, whichever be the sooner. An’

when I
do
let him loose, there’s gonna be questions. Which questions, when answered, will likely prove he ain’t you.

So by then, you’d best be long gone; else there’ll be gun-play in the streets’ll make the Alamo look like... like the Boston Tea Party,’ he concluded, lamely.

‘Now, come on Wyatt – you know you an’ me – an’

maybe Bat, if’n he’ll tolerate my company – you know we can take care of the Clantons, for sweet sake!’

‘
And
the McLowries; an’ any other law-shy gunsel Pa Clanton chooses to throw at us? No, Doc – before
that
kind of Armageddon is declared, I got to have my brothers to back me. I already sent for ’em – but Virgil an’ Warren’s got a way to come; an’ Morgan – well, he ain’t no more than a boy. Now, if you’re around
before
they get here, Doc, there’ll be no holdin’ the outbreak of hostilities. So I ain’t askin’ you to go forever, understand? Just until the hosts of the Righteous is well-assembled. Then maybe I’ll send for you – so stay close, so’s I can get word...’

‘Well, thank you kindly, an’ here endeth the first lesson,’ bowed Doc. ‘I don’t like it, Wyatt; it don’t come at all natural to run!’

‘I’m not askin’ you to like it – I’m
tellin’
you to go! An’

furthermore, if you ain’t gone come sun-up, then I greatly fear, friend, that Bat an’ I’ll have to...’

‘I know, I know – you’ll come a-lookin’! Ain’t it always the same?’ he grumbled, for the second time that day.

Then, tucking the bottle under his arm, he turned his offended back on the flail of the Lord, and sashayed back to base.

15

You may have wondered, during the course of this brief history, why a popular sink of iniquity, such as the Last Chance, remained so singularly free of paying customers during licensed hours? And the answer is simple: word had got around that the Clantons were whooping up the place, that’s why. And that’s all.

So, for the best part of a whole day, the thirst-racked walk-on parts had been prowling the town, looking for alternative distractions. Ma Golightly, for one, had done very well out of it; and at the Bird Cage Theatre Eddie Foy was thinking that if business went on like this, they were going to hit Broadway with a box-office bonanza which could only be described as a smackeroo! On such imponderables does showbiz depend...

But by now, Main Street was beginning to fill with a rebarbative rabble of recidivists who wanted to know what in hell was going on in there so’s a man couldn’t get a drink when he was all tuckered out, playin’ guitars, an’

such...?

And this was the tinder, apt for a demagogue’s match, which the Clantons found assembled, as they finally emerged to promote their already revealed plans for the Doctor’s discomforture.

Seth wasn’t with them, no, sir! He was a gunfighter, wasn’t he? And by no means about to become involved in a vulgar lynching, calculated to attract the disapproval of Wyatt Earp. That’s not what he was paid for, for God’s sake!

But Steven unavoidably
was
present; and Ike now dragged him forwards, and presented him to the ready-made audience for their consideration.

‘You know what we got here, friends?’ he enquired.

They didn’t at once, no. And they cared less. Some dude, they supposed, bound for the high jump – and probably serve the feller right, at that! But what they wanted right now was a drink, thank you; so, if the Clantons wouldn’t mind stepping aside, they would be grateful!

But Ike was not the man to let a matter drop, once he’d got fairly started.

‘This here sneering son of Satan is a friend of Doc Holliday’s,’ he persevered, ‘the rat-featured dentist in whose presence no decent tooth is safe in its bed. And who, furthermore, killed our brother,’ he remembered, having been prompted by Phineas.

‘Well now, since the aforementioned is currently cowering in custody behind the guns of your bent sheriff, and his crony, the sanctimonious Earp, what we propose to do is this: we – that is, my remaining brothers and I – are going to stretch this feller’s neck a little; to see if that won’t make Holliday come out an’ face us in a law-abidin’

manner, instead of cowering cravenly in custody behind the guns of your bent...’

‘You already said that...’ counselled Billy.

‘Well, anyway, you get the idea? So while we’re adoin’

that, I suggest that you all express your outraged feelings by smashing into Holliday’s sadistic emporium, and availing yourselves of its valuable contents; which he won’t likely be needin’ no more...’

‘Once we’ve finished with him that is...’ contributed Phineas.

‘They know that, Phin – they
know
that! God’s sake, they ain’t plumb stupid!’

Of course they weren’t – well, not completely plumb.

One of them presently raised the shout of ‘Sure!’ and the cry was soon taken up. So while Steven was rope-hauled, hog-tied along Main Street to his fatal appointment, the extras lit torches – for some reason – and then swirled angrily in and out of the toothery; bearing off such items as bone-forceps, scalpels, probes, and – once they got around to it – that pride of Doc’s life, the late death-chair from San Quentin.

That would teach him wouldn’t it?

Sure! Sure!

It is never easy to explain to a girl who has recently been the recipient of your heart-held promise to settle down and set your slippers out to smoulder, that, on the other hand, you are about to leave town for an indefinite period. The apparent contradiction tends to attract criticism; and Doc Holliday was finding that no exception had been made in his case.

Kate was as mad as a hornet in a trombone; and having used up most of her picturesque phraseology on the clarification of his other inadequacies, she was now resorting to the violence of which she was so well-known a practitioner.

‘But Honey,’ said Doc, removing the remains of a giant economy size pot of face-cream from his previously immaculate lapels; ‘you know I’d ride through hell an’

back for you! It’s just that, on this occasion, I’d like for you to come with me. We’ll both enjoy it – it’ll be a break,’ he added, without much conviction.

‘You think so, do you?’ she enquired, reaching for a handsome bronze statuette of the Venus de Milo with an egg-timer in its stomach, which had been an admired appurtenance of her business premises in Acapulco. ‘Take that!’

‘Now Kate, what could I possibly do with such a provocative gew-gaw?’ he objected, catching it in mid-flight, and returning it to stock. ‘You know right well that if I don’t leave town, Wyatt’ll be gunnin’ for me, come sun-up. And one thing I never done in my whole life is shoot the guts out of a friend. Always been a close-held principle of mine – although right now, you’re stretchin’ it some,’ he admitted.

‘Oh, he’s a real gentleman, ain’t he, Sugar?’ she appealed to Dodo, now resorting to tears – which, she had been told, could often be effective at such times...

She had been misinformed. The effect was similar to that of a hot-spring erupting in a mud-hole; and Holliday, not wishing her to make a filthy habit of the manoeuvre, said as much.

As for Dodo, she was, for once, uncertain as to
what
to say. If this was the widely advertised Love, she thought, she would be quite content to leave it to the older generation for the foreseeable... Besides, she had no wish to intrude on such a private moment; and so, being a sensible girl, she changed the subject, before it became exhausted.

‘Oh, look,’ she said, ‘they’re lighting a bonfire in the street! Isn’t that pretty?’

It may have been – but it was also Holliday’s shop; and he registered the fact with an astonished and indignant snarl.

‘By God, they’ve got my chair!’ he exclaimed and leapt through the door, fire-arms springing from every holster and ticket-pocket en route.

Such of you as had been previously concerned by the lack of custom in the bar may have also added a footnote to the effect that it was about damn time we had a little action round here. After all, it’s a Western, ain’t it? Well, here it is at last, friends; and don’t blame me if it’s a bit on the bloody side!

You will possibly remember that, for reasons of his own, our hired gun-tuner, Seth Harper by name, had elected to remain in the saloon, rather than join the ensuing whoopee with the maddened mob outside. You do? Good.

Well, then – he was now quietly occupied in draining the sludge-like sediment from the greasy glasses left on the bar by his friends and colleagues; at the moment when inspiration had struck them, as with a branding-iron.

Not a
lot
in it for him, of course; but ‘waste not want not’ had ever been his monosyllabic watch-words – and why not, I ask you? A man got precious few perquisites at his end of the business, the golden rewards of effort going largely to his employers.