Doc: A Novel (30 page)

“You see?” she cried, weeping and frantic. “You see? Do you want to die? Are you trying to kill yourself? You can’t—”

The chest pain was searing. He had nothing left for courtesy.

“God damn you, woman! Shut up!”

And Kate did because Doc never spoke to her like that, never spoke to anyone like that. She could see that he was truly angry, and his anger frightened her more than that of any man she’d ever been with, not because he might beat her—who cared a damn about that?—but because he might send her away.

Cold to her core, she held her breath, watching him catch his, and she wailed in pain when he straightened cautiously and said the words she feared most.

“Darlin’, I can’t live this way anymore.”

He wouldn’t look at her. She knew what that meant. He was done with her. Panicking, she started to beg, to promise, to swear that she’d be good, but he shook his head. It was over—she
knew
it—and nothing she said now would make any difference. The horse pranced and pulled at the cross-ties while she sobbed—great, gulping, terrified sobs. He’ll go to that goddam horse, not me! Kate thought furiously, and she
hated
Doc for that, so blind with tears that she almost didn’t notice when he came close enough to take her in his arms and hold her while she wept.

“Hush, now,” he was saying softly, over and over. “Hush, now. Hush.”

When at last she quieted, he took a step back, wiped her cheeks with his palms, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and made her blow her nose.

All the things she’s lost, he was thinking, and what she has is me.

“Darlin’,” he said judiciously, “I believe the time has come for us to define the terms of our association. I am a slender reed to lean upon, but—”

“You ain’t—? I don’t have to—?”

“No,” he said. “No, but if this’s goin’ to work, you have to promise me—”

“I will, Doc! Whatever you say! I won’t argue no more—”

“Kate! Hush up, and listen!”

Her dazzling aqua eyes were as red-rimmed as poor old Snickers’, wet and frightened and fastened on his own. She snuffled in snot and wiped her nose on the back of her hand as a child might, waiting to hear what John Henry Holliday had never told her, what he had never told anyone.

“Kate,” he began, “I know this disease inside and out—”

He couldn’t.

Couldn’t speak of the cadaver he’d dissected, about the way a chance glance at his own body could bring a vision of that tubercular pauper back to him. Couldn’t bear to tell how memories of his mother’s last hours would sometimes grip and shake him, like a dog killing a rat …

“Kate,” he said finally, “I know what is waiting for me at the end of this road. I am askin’ you to believe me: I am in no hurry to arrive at my destination. I know you’re scared, darlin’. I’m scared, too.” He looked away. “Christ, I am so damn
tired
of bein’ scared …”

Dick Naylor snorted and pawed. Doc went to him and ran a hand down his back, murmuring. The horse quieted, and Doc spoke again, softly and without turning. “A few weeks ago, we buried a fine young man. If there were any justice on earth, Johnnie Sanders would have outlived me, and this wretched world might have been better for his presence in it. Well, none of us knows how much time we have, but I know this,” he said, looking now at Kate. “I do not want to spend another
minute
of whatever I have left bein’ scared. I can’t carry the fear anymore. Not mine. Not yours. I have to lay that burden down.”

He was silent for a time, but when he came to Kate and took both of her hands in his own, he was calmer and more sure of himself than he had been in a long time.

“This is what I am prepared to offer,” he said. “I will be good to you, Kate, but if you want to stay with me, you have to let me do as much as I can, whenever I can for as long as I can. And both of us have to quit bein’ scared. Will you promise me that?”

For the rest of her long life, Mária Katarina Harony would remember standing in Hamilton Bell’s New Famous Elephant Barn on the Fourth of July in 1878, looking up at Doc Holliday. She would remember how quiet it was. She would remember dust dancing in shafts of light filtering through narrow gaps in the barn’s roof. She would remember how thin Doc looked—even then, when he was forty-five pounds heavier than he would be when he died. She would remember wondering if she had ever before seen his eyes so devoid of humor and irony. She would remember his hands, strong and steady and gentle, holding her own.

She would never understand the man himself but, that afternoon, she understood this much at least: she understood what Doc needed from her, and from anyone who was to be his friend. Her English was inadequate to express it. The austerity of Latin was best.
Visus virium:
the presumption of strength. And … respect, as well, for the courage it took to produce that illusion.

“
Nec spe, nec metu
,” she said. Without hope, without fear.

“Athena,” he murmured, kissing her forehead, holding her close. “That’s my girl. That’s my sweet, brave, Hungarian warrior …”

She watched, silent, while he finished tacking up and slipped the cross-ties off and led the horse out of the barn. She had never seen him ride in the six months they’d been together. They’d always traveled by stage or railway. Light and quick, he swung up into the saddle—a motion completed between one breath and the next—and held the reins with relaxed assurance.

“
L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!
” he declared with that charming, crooked grin of his. “Wish me luck, darlin’!”

She smiled damply and nodded. He reined over and the horse moved off, their partnership a fluid rhythm, full of grace and joy.

Tout casse, tout passe, tout lasse
, she thought. “
Ne meurs pas, mon amour
, don’t die,” she whispered, but she lifted her voice to call, “
Bonne chance!
” and started walking toward the fairgrounds, to meet him after the race.

Short horse races, the events were called—not because the horses were short but because the distances were. If you happened to be looking the other way, the contest could be over before you turned your head. Even so, huge bets often rode on the outcome. John Henry Holliday had grown up hearing stories of entire plantations won and lost that way.

And yet there were no fixed rules for such races. Time and place might be determined in advance, though they were just as likely to be “Here and now.” The distance to be run? From this rock to that tree—anywhere from fifty yards to five-eighths of a mile. Who would ride? The owner, some kid, a jockey. How would the race begin? Starter’s gun, tap and go, ask and answer. Who’ll judge the finish? And how will disputes be settled? Frequently with fists; occasionally with pistols.

On the frontier, the short-race horses themselves were not pampered, fragile Thoroughbreds but ordinary working animals, ridden by the men who depended on them daily. They were saddle horses, stock horses, cutting horses—descended from wild Spanish barbs, lost army mounts, and Indian ponies. What they had in common was early speed: an explosive start and the heart to run full-on in a straightaway competition that distilled the excitement of a longer race’s home stretch into half a minute of purified, ecstatic, screaming emotion.

The times were getting shorter. Twenty-four seconds flat in an eighty-rod race was no longer uncommon. Breeders were beginning to produce heavily muscled, powerfully built animals that could break like an arrow from a bow and beat the earth with such force they seemed invincible—until some boy on a random-bred thirteen-year-old gelding with a barrel chest showed up for his first race and won it going away, stunning the favorite and ruining punters who by-God never saw
that
coming.

And
that
was what made it interesting.

There were four minutes left when Doc Holliday got to the line, and there might have been an argument about him riding Wyatt’s horse, except that Mayor Kelley was as busy as Deputy Earp, and Dog had sent word from town to let substitutes act as jockeys.

Odds were adjusted to account for the weight Dick Naylor carried. A flurry of additional betting took place.

The track was dry, the race a measured quarter mile, with no heats to thin the field. The posts were taped.

A crowd of bettors—farmers, cowboys, townsmen—lined the distance. Fourteen horses were maneuvered into position.

Behind the line, a gun was raised.

And fired.

Fourteen horses: from a standing start to top speed in three strides. From a resting heart rate of thirty beats per minute to a brutal bastinado of four beats per second. Deep chests and massive hindquarters powering legs like the spokes of a wheel. Each hoof making separate contact with the ground, taking the animal’s full weight for a fraction of a second in a rumbling cavalry charge, streaking toward the finish—

Fifteen seconds into the race, there were five horses out in front of the favorite, Michigan Jim, with Dick Naylor in seventh. Nineteen seconds. Jim and Dick were neck and neck, as the rest of the field began to fade and fall back. Three seconds more, and it was Michigan Jim in the lead, with Dick Naylor gaining, no more than a nose behind.

John Henry would have no memory of the moment he was thrown.

Later he would recall sailing grandly through the air, time slowing strangely until he crashed onto the ground and lay there, stunned, the air slammed out of his cheesy lungs, while the Fates and nearly thirteen thousand pounds of horseflesh wheeled and danced and hammered the ground around him. Weirdly tranquil, he thought, I should protect my hands. But he could not move, not even enough to draw his arms closer to his body. And anyway it didn’t matter. He’d be killed in a moment or two.

Good, he thought, for it did not seem like such a bad end to be trampled to death on a sunny afternoon after twenty-seven glorious seconds on a racetrack.

Through the ringing in his ears, he heard Kate screaming in the distance and was sorry for her. Then he was surrounded by men waving the horses off, while somebody gripped him under the arms and dragged him off the track. Presently, his reflexes took over and he rolled onto his hands and knees, heart lurching, stomach heaving, collapsed lungs sucking wind.

Kate was kneeling at his side by then—almost as breathless as he was himself, having run as far as the horses—but she was neither weeping nor cursing him for a stupid, reckless, idiotic selfish bastard.

Good girl, he thought.

Eventually he got enough breath back to cough, and gasp, and cough some more, and finally to speak. All he asked was “Did we win?”

James Earp was at the track and saw what happened, watching in wonder as Kate took charge of the aftermath. James himself found a rider to catch and cool off his brother’s horse and lead Dick back to the stable, but it was Kate who arranged with a German to take the three of them into town in a wagon, stopping at Doc McCarty’s on the way back to Dodge House.

When Doc Holliday and Kate were settled in their hotel room, James went home, spoke to the cashier and the floor maid to make sure everything was running smoothly. He settled a dispute with a customer over a bill and asked several of the day girls to stay on for overnight business. Finally, quietly, he went in to Bessie, meaning to take a nap for a few hours. The fireworks weren’t until ten.

“How’d the race go, honey?” his wife asked sleepily. “Did Wyatt win?”

“No, but his horse crossed the line second. Doc Holliday was riding most of the time.”

Bessie rolled over, rising on an elbow. “Most of the time?”

“Yeah, well, there was considerable discussion about that.” James had unbuttoned his shirt partway and paused to pull it one-handed over his head and then down off the arm he couldn’t raise. “No question about the winner. Michigan Jim at two to one, with Dick Naylor just behind him, and a bay named Creepin’ Moses in third.”

James climbed into bed, tuckered out.

Bessie was wide awake now. “So? What happened?”

“ ’Bout two strides before the ribbon, some damn hound comes out of nowhere and crosses the track just beyond the finish line. One of Dog Kelley’s coursers. Saw a rabbit or something, poking its head up in the infield, I guess.”

“Mercy!”

“Yes, ma’am! It was a mess. Dick checked up and Doc went flying.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Not as much as you’d think, seeing him hit the ground. I expected he was killed or broke his fool neck, but he just got the wind knocked out of him. He’s scraped up pretty good and he’ll be hobbling for a week, but McCarty says nothing’s broke. Chalkie ruled Doc was still in the saddle when Dick crossed the line. Even the man who came in third thought so. Dick paid nine to one to place.”

“Kate must’ve been beside herself.”

“She was at first, but she got a grip pretty quick. Handled it real well.”

Lying back, Bessie said thoughtfully, “I think they’re going to stay together.”

“Yeah,” James said. “Me, too.”

“You bet against me?” Wyatt asked Morg later that night, still trying to understand how he himself had lost money while Doc and Morgan had come out ahead.