Doc: A Novel (45 page)

The coughing hit again. Morgan said, “C’mon, Doc. Sit down. I’m sorry. Look, I have some money saved up, and—”

“I don’t need charity! All I need is to be left alone to earn my way as best I can! And now I must go buck the tiger—which is a fool’s errand—because you just busted up a poker game that I was
winnin’
, God damn you, and this time of night, faro is the only game in town that will be open to me. In future, I will take it as a personal favor if you would kindly refrain from interferin’ in my affairs. Good evenin’ to you, sir.”

Everyone in the place watched as he left.

For a long time, Morgan sat openmouthed, trying to think of some way to help. Nothing came to mind.

The bartender brought a whisk broom and dustpan over to the piano, and knelt to sweep up the broken glass.

Shoulda seen it coming
. That’s what Wyatt thought, though he heard it in his father’s voice.
Walked right into it, you stupid pile of shit
.

Seven of them, waiting for him in the saloon. Bartender, gone. Off in the corner, just one man playing faro. Nobody else in the place.

He’d been warned. Twice. Dog first, then Bat. So Wyatt had started wearing a sidearm pretty regularly, and went as far as loading heavy-gauge into the shotguns behind the bars in every saloon in town. But the weeks passed. Nobody else came at him and … He let his guard down. He got sloppy. His shift was almost over, and he was distracted.

They had his gun before he took two steps past the door.

He’d been thinking about Mattie Blaylock, confused because it didn’t start out so complicated between them. Mattie did her job and Wyatt did his, but somewhere along the line, he went off the tracks, and he was damned if he saw where. Like in Topeka, he noticed she was looking at a necklace in a store window. He went back the next morning to buy it for her, and it wasn’t cheap, either, but instead of being happy, she asked, “What’s this for?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”

She wore it once, and it looked pretty on her, too, but after that she put it away.

Then, last night, before he left for work, he told Mattie that Big George Hoover had invited them over for dinner on Sunday. He thought Mattie would like to wear one of the dresses Doc Holliday had helped her pick out, and maybe that necklace from Topeka, but she acted like Wyatt was asking her to do something unreasonable. She looked at him like he was some kind of idiot even to think about going to dinner at the Hoovers’.

Wyatt asked if it was because Margaret Hoover used to be—well, Maggie Carnahan, and maybe that brought back bad memories or something. Mattie just shook her head like he was so stupid, it wasn’t worth trying to explain it to him. Hell, he thought. I might not be the smartest man in Kansas, but I ain’t
that
dumb.

Course, it turned out that was exactly how dumb he was, but at the time he was thinking that any effort to be good to Mattie seemed to ricochet back at him. She’d look suspicious and annoyed. “Why are you acting so nice?” she’d ask, like she knew he was faking. And it had just occurred to him—right when he was walking into that saloon—if you think niceness is a fraud, then maybe you think only meanness is real. So maybe Mattie would be happier if he belted her and called her a low, shameless harlot because she’d believe that, except the idea of hitting a woman—

He never finished the thought, suddenly aware that he’d just been surrounded, disarmed, and was about to be killed with his own pistol by a heavyset, middle-aged man with eyes like stones.

“I guess things’re different when you’re not up against a kid half your age and half your size, eh, Earp?”

I’m dead, Wyatt thought, weirdly calm, but certain this was no bluff.

“He don’t look so tough now, do he, boys?” the man was saying.

There was a murmur of grinning agreement, and one of the cowboys said, “He sure don’t, Mr. Driskill!”

“Are you Jesse Driskill, sir?” Wyatt asked.

There was a chorus of hoots.

“Oh, it’s
sir
now! Ain’t that sweet, boys? Ain’t that nice and polite? No, you sonofabitch, I ain’t Jesse. I’m his brother. I’m Tobias Driskill, and that was my boy you bashed, peckerhead.”

A few paces behind him, a wooden chair scraped against the floor. Everyone backed off a little and left Wyatt standing alone.

Hell, he thought. Shot in the back, like Bill Hickok, and dime novelists will have the good of it.

“Think you’ve got enough friends to stand with you here, Tobie?” asked a honeyed Georgia voice. “Or is Achilles—alone—too many?”

“Doc? Doc Holliday?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“This ain’t your fight, Doc,” Driskill told him.

“I beg to differ, Tobie. Deputy Earp is a patient of mine. He still owes me four dollars.”

“He’s worth a lot more to me dead! Hell, I’ll pay you the four bucks—”

Nobody even noticed that Doc had a gun in his hand until he fired both barrels of a two-shot Deringer into the floor.

Wyatt got over the shock soonest. It was three steps to the bar. An instant later he had the shotgun in his hands.

Doc murmured, “Well, now, there’s a surprise …”

And everyone thought he meant that he’d made them all jump, or that Wyatt Earp had just evened up the odds some, pulling a scattergun out. In point of fact, John Henry Holliday was discovering that excitement could temporarily inhibit the need to cough and make his chest pain simply … disappear. And in that astounding adrenaline-fueled state of grace, he spoke again, softly but fluently, his voice musical and gentle and clear.

“That is a very generous offer, Tobie, and frankly, I could use the money, but I think you’ll find that Mr. Earp will decline your kindness. He is unusually scrupulous in such matters … Now, as it happens, I was a witness to your boy’s arrest, Tobe. The youngster was in his cups, and rowdy, and in that condition he did considerable damage not only to a theater but to a German fiddler widely held to be a tolerable musician. Such persons are rare in Kansas and tend to be valued beyond what a Texan might reckon. Deputy Earp subdued your son with only as much force as was necessary to book him for assault. The young man was fined by a judge and released before midnight—”

By that time they could hear boots pounding toward them as city policemen converged on the saloon from bars all over town.

“Ah! Morgan!” Doc cried genially. “And Sheriff Masterson! Evenin’, Chuck. I was just explainin’ the fine points of Dodge City law enforcement to Mr. Tobias Driskill here, after he tried to jump Wyatt with this contemptible collection of illiterate, bean-eating white trash—”

With a brilliant smile, Bat stepped between Doc and the Driskill men.

“Don’t mind him! He’s just drunk,” Bat said smoothly. “How ’bout you boys hang up your guns right over there and have a drink on me? Wyatt, I think I can straighten this out for you. Mr. Driskill, may I have a word?”

In years to come, after the gunfight in Tombstone, when the myths and lies began to accumulate, the story of that evening in Dodge would be repeated with Shakespearean advantages.

Several bars were confidently put forward as the location of the confrontation, and at least three bartenders claimed to have been eyewitnesses to the event. The man who was actually working that night never talked about it, being in no hurry to tell anyone that Tobias Driskill shoved a gun in his nose and told him to go take a piss. Which he did.

Several men later claimed to be the faro dealer Doc bucked, but only one of them admitted that he was too scared to move when the Driskill gang ordered everybody to get out. “They
might
be trouble,” Doc told the dealer quietly, “but I
will
shoot you if you shut this game down while I’m ahead.” And don’t think Doc didn’t pocket his winnings before he stepped up on Wyatt’s behalf.

Eventually Tobias Driskill had not six cowhands with him but twenty-five Texas desperadoes, all taunting Wyatt Earp with guns drawn and about to mow him down in a hail of lead when—at the last possible moment—the ferocious killer
Doc Holliday
jumped up, a chromed Colt in each hand, cursing the Texans for white-livered cowards, intimidating them just long enough for Wyatt to draw his entirely legendary Ned Buntline Special. Routinely promoted to full marshal in these tales, Wyatt pistol-whipped Driskill and commanded the other Texans to “shed their hardware.” A foolish cowboy raised his piece. Doc Holliday instantly shot him dead. Terrified despite overwhelming odds in their favor, the remaining two dozen Texans complied with the order to drop their weapons. Fifty revolvers were said to have been picked up from the street after Wyatt and Doc had arrested the entire gang and marched them off to the Dodge City hoosegow.

Nothing remotely like that was reported in either the
Dodge City Times
or the
Ford County Globe
, nor is there any court record of such a large number of cowboys being arrested and booked all at once—before, during, or after 1878. And yet, for the next fifty years, whenever anyone asked why he stuck with Doc Holliday long after the dentist was far more trouble than he was worth, Wyatt Earp would always give the same unadorned answer. “Doc saved my life in Dodge.”

At the time, however, the whole thing was over so quickly that Wyatt only came to understand its significance during the long hours of silence he would soon spend waiting for the dentist to die, listening to a clock tick Doc’s life away.

I shoulda thanked him, Wyatt would think.

Too late, too late, too late …

For instead of expressing gratitude as soon as he and Morg and Doc left the saloon, Wyatt asked, “Where’d you get that gun, Doc?”

The eastern sky was beginning to lighten. The day was going to be gray and rainy, but between the approaching dawn and the lamplight from the saloon, Morgan could see that Doc was trembling. “Come on, Wyatt. Let it go!”

“Where’d you get that gun, Doc?” Wyatt repeated.

“Morgan, you may correct me if I am wrong,” Doc said, his eyes on Wyatt’s, “but I believe I just saved your brother’s miserable Republican hide, and he is about to arrest me for it. You have anything to say about that?”

Wyatt was right, and Morgan backed him. “It’s illegal to carry firearms in town, Doc.”

The dentist’s hand was shaking when he offered the Deringer. “I told you before, Wyatt: I am never entirely unarmed. And a damn good thing, tonight.”

Wyatt took the little pistol Doc held in the palm of his hand. “I’m sorry, Doc, but you’re under—”

Before he could finish, the dentist busted out laughing—

And shouted, “Oh!” and doubled over, and staggered backward with both hands to his chest, where … something had just broken loose inside him, and he could feel a sharp clear focus of pain and pressure … but he honestly didn’t care. He was still flying: still feeling the magical effects of that moment when seven men had backed away in
fear
. And it wasn’t Wyatt Earp they’d feared. It was little ole John Henry Holliday, a sick, skinny dentist from Griffin by-God Georgia!

For those few enchanted minutes, he had felt strong and unafraid. And now this! This was the capper!

Straightening, throwing an arm around Wyatt, he declared, “
Nemo supra leges!
That’s what I love about you, Wyatt! One law for everyone!”

“You’re drunk, Doc,” Wyatt said shortly, for he was embarrassed by the gesture, and Doc was starting to cough again. The sound of that right in your ear was kind of disgusting. Doc seemed to understand and moved away some, but he looked kind of strange.

“An accurate observation,” he agreed, beginning to choke, “though not—not germane to our discussion—”

Just then, James showed up, wanting to know what in hell had happened. Morg started to tell him, “That Driskill kid’s family showed up, but Doc …”

Morgan’s voice trailed off.

Wyatt was staring past him toward Wright’s General Outfitting, across the street. Morg turned to follow his gaze. Why is Bob Wright up so early? he wondered. Then it hit him.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered. “Wyatt … no.”

There was already a crowd. Not the hundreds of high season, but thirty or forty men drawn by Doc’s gunshots, and by the abrupt departure of city deputies from saloons all over town. At first they thought maybe the Earps had some kind of beef with Doc Holliday, but then the word started to get around that a bunch of Texans had tried to kill Wyatt, and that was interesting enough to make it worthwhile to stand in the rain that was starting up, especially when Wyatt yelled, “
Bob Wright!
You want me dead, you rich sonofabitch? I’m right here!”

The merchant was at the edge of the crowd talking to somebody and kind of smirking. Bob turned at the sound of his name and stared at the deputy advancing on him. “I got no quarrel with you, Wyatt,” Bob called, but there was something in his eyes …

“No, you’d rather pay people to do your dirty work,” Wyatt said, unbuckling his gun belt, jerking the badge off his shirt, dropping them both onto the dampening dirt. “Come for me yourself, you sonofabitch!”

“All right, goddammit!” Bob agreed, pulling his own jacket off. “You’re on!”

“Wyatt,” Doc called, bent over, one arm braced against a hitching rail. “For the love of God! Your teeth!”

Morg started forward, meaning to get between Bob and Wyatt, but Bat was on the street now, too, and gripped Morgan’s arm to stop him.

“Let them settle it,” Bat advised. “This has been coming since the Fourth of July.”

But Morg wasn’t the only one who’d seen Wyatt this angry before. James knew what could happen, too, and he was already at Wyatt’s side, trying to talk sense to him.

“Give this to Doc,” Wyatt said, pulling the denture out and handing it to James.

Bob took that opportunity to throw a sucker punch. It was a solid hit, but poor judgment.

“You dirty dog!” James cried, backing away. “Go ahead, Wyatt. Kill the bastard!”

All of this made for a good show and the gathering mob grew noisier as the sky lightened to a dull pewter. At first, the money was mostly on Wyatt. He was eight years younger, fifteen pounds heavier, and ablaze, his face transfigured by rage heaped up, night after night, during years of fruitless, thankless, dangerous work, protecting the lives and wealth of storekeepers and lawyers and politicians who set the price of killing a peace officer at no more than a $12 fine. But Bob Wright had advantages, too. More physical strength than anyone suspected. A slightly longer reach. A deep, cold well of resentful envy and the sudden ferocious desire to take for himself everything priceless that Wyatt Earp had. The regard of other men. Respect. Loyalty, if not love.