Weird West 04 - The Doctor and the Dinosaurs (20 page)

C
ODY HAD DEPARTED
, taking two men with him, when Holliday awoke the next morning. He got up, looked around for his boots, finally realized that he had slept with them on, got to his feet, walked outside, and winced as he moved into the sunlight.

“I have
got
to start wearing a Stetson,” he muttered to himself as he tried to shield his eyes from the sun.

When he'd adjusted to the brightness of the morning, he walked over to the remains of a campfire, realized he'd overslept breakfast again, and sat on a tree stump, waiting for everything to come into focus.

Buntline, on crutches, joined him a few minutes later.

“Good morning, Doc,” he said.

Holliday winced. “Not so loud.”

“I'm just speaking conversationally,” replied Buntline. He raised his voice. “
This
is loud.”

Holliday groaned. “I bet you think you're pretty funny.”

“I have my moments,” said Buntline with a smile.

“I'd tell you to draw, but you'd probably reach for a notebook and a pencil.”

Buntline laughed. “So, how are you on this fine day?”

“Same as usual,” replied Holliday. “Hung over.”

“You know that the famous Buffalo Bill has deserted us?”

“He said he would. I may not like him all that much, but he's always been a man of his word,” said Holliday. “Well,” he added, “except when he's talking money.”

“Maybe you should have gone with him,” suggested Buntline. “He could have made you famous.” He paused. “
More
famous, I mean.”

“Most shootists would like
less
fame, not more,” answered Holliday. “Half the men I've killed have been green kids out to make a reputation, kids I'd never seen before and that nobody will ever see again.”

“I see what you mean,” said Buntline. “When we get back East, I'm going to write a stage play about the West, and as a sign of friendship, your name will never be mentioned.”

“Write about Billy the Kid,” suggested Holliday. “Everywhere I go they're still singing songs about him.”

“Maybe I'll do that,” replied Buntline, wincing as he shifted his weight. “Or maybe Bill Hickok. Everyone's heard of Wild Bill.”

Holliday snorted contemptuously. “One lucky shot from fifty yards away and he becomes the most famous shootist in the world!” Then he shrugged. “What the hell. Write about him. At least he doesn't have to worry about kids calling him out, unless they can call him up from hell.”

“You didn't think much of him, I take it?”

“I don't think much of a lot of people,” replied Holliday.

“I've noticed,” said Buntline with a smile.

There was a sudden commotion at the far end of camp, and then Marsh and a dozen of his men appeared. Marsh dismounted and issued some orders. Holliday saw the men were all carrying things—bits and
pieces of the tyrannosaur, he assumed—wrapped in cloth, and they carted them off to the tent that he was using to store his fossils.

Marsh saw Holliday and Buntline, and walked over to them.

“Good morning,” said Holliday with no show of enthusiasm.

“It's almost noon,” Marsh corrected him.

“Whatever.”

“Do you know what that bastard did?”

“Which bastard are you talking about?” asked Holliday.

“There's only one, damn it!”

“Ah!” said Holliday. “You mean Mr. Edison.”

“I don't like your sense of humor,” said Marsh harshly.

“You've got a lot of company,” said Holliday with no show of anger.

“That bastard left camp before sunrise so he could stake out a claim on the head all for himself,” continued Marsh.

“Maybe you should call him out and shoot him,” suggested Holliday pleasantly.

“It's just lucky I know what kind of backstabbing swine I'm dealing with,” continued Marsh. A look of triumph crossed his bearded face. “I got there twenty minutes ahead of him!”

“No question about it,” said Holliday. “You're an even better backstabbing swine than he is.”

Marsh glared at him. “I don't think your presence is required here any longer, sir!” he snapped.

“Bullshit,” said Holliday. “My presence and Roosevelt's is all that's kept you alive. But if you'd like to see the last of me, that can be arranged easily enough. Go dig in Colorado or Montana.”

“When the greatest finds of all are right here?” demanded Marsh incredulously. “You must be mad!”

“Not yet,” said Holliday. “But I'm getting there.”

“Bah!” snorted Marsh. “You're hopeless!”

He turned on his heel and walked off to his fossil tent.

“Do you get the feeling that they turn every ounce of their intelligence onto their hobby and leave the rest of their lives to fend for themselves?” asked Holliday.

“I don't know that I'd call it a hobby,” replied Buntline. “I think science is the word you're looking for.”

“I've already found the word I'm looking for,” said Holliday disgustedly. “It's
obsession
.”

“May I point out as a friend and not a potential shootist that you're even more unpleasant than usual today?”

“Damn it, Ned,” said Holliday irritably. “Yesterday I faced a tyrannosaur with a goddamned six-shooter. The only reason I'm here at all is to get you and Tom healthy and move these fools out of here before they're killed by dinosaurs.” He spat on the ground. “Do you think it was worth the risk?”

“You were dying and now you're here,” said Buntline. “Ask me an easy one instead.”

“I'm
still
dying,” said Holliday, coughing some blood into a handkerchief as if for emphasis. “I just wish there was anyone or anything around here worth dying
for
. Do I care what kills Cope or Marsh as long as it does it slowly and painfully? No. Do I care what happens to some Apache village I've never seen? No. So what the hell am I doing here?”

“Same as most of us,” said Buntline, forcing a smile. “Trying to make it to tomorrow.”

“True,” said Holliday with a sigh. “I can remember days when I liked the odds better.”

They fell silent for a moment. Then Buntline looked around. “Someone ought to be making lunch any minute now for those of us who stayed behind or returned to camp.”

“Makes no difference,” said Holliday. “I don't eat this early in the
day.” He took a sip from his flask and smiled. “It interferes with my digestion.”

Buntline laughed just as Roosevelt drove a wagon carrying Edison into camp, lifted the inventor out of it, and helped him walk over to join Holliday and Buntline.

“That was a hell of an animal,” remarked Edison.

“There were fifty or sixty men chopping it to bits this morning,” said Holliday. “Is there anything left of it?”

Edison smiled. “About ninety-five percent of it. And I can tell you that you're lucky as hell to be alive.”

“So says everyone who's not on this side of my lungs,” replied Holliday.

“It was in the nature of an experiment,” explained Roosevelt. “We won't leave camp without your weapons again.” Suddenly he frowned. “I just wish he hadn't fallen on my pteranodon.”

“There'll be more,” said Holliday. Suddenly he smiled. “If you don't die from a snake or insect bite first.”

“My friend the optimist,” said Roosevelt with a smile.

“By the way, I don't suppose one of our scientists killed the other?” said Holliday.

“There were a couple of times I thought they would. Marsh wanted the right half—the tyrannosaur collapsed on his left side, if you'll recall. Cope decided making either side take the crushed half was unfair.”

“That doesn't sound like him,” said Holliday.

Roosevelt grinned again. “His solution was to take the front half and leave the back half for Marsh.”

Holliday laughed aloud, which brought on another coughing seizure.

“Anyway,” continued Roosevelt, “with Cody gone and Younger retiring from the security business, no one on either side was anxious to get into a gunfight over it, and for a minute there I thought Cope and Marsh would actually come to blows.”

“So Theodore used the toe of his boot to trace out a boxing ring in the dirt, and invited Cope and Marsh to duke it out,” said Edison with an amused grin. “After all, he came out here to referee one of John L.'s boxing matches, so he was the perfect choice to referee it.”

“I suspect they each remembered they had urgent business back at camp,” suggested Buntline.

Roosevelt shook his head. “Couldn't lose face in front of the men. Of course, neither of them wanted to lose any teeth either. Cope claimed he needed his hands for the fine work he had to do with his fossils, and he couldn't take a chance of breaking one of them on Marsh's jaw.” Roosevelt chuckled at the memory. “Marsh claimed he was a coward, and did it so loud and for so long that Cope finally agreed.’”

“And?” asked Holliday. “I just saw Marsh, and he didn't seem any the worse for wear.”

“He and Cope began arguing the rules,” said Edison, still amused. “Marsh wanted a bigger ring. Cope wanted gloves. Marsh wanted bare knuckles. Cope wanted five-minute rounds, Marsh wanted three-minute rounds, Cope wanted to fight to first blood, Marsh wanted to fight to a knockout. After twenty minutes they realized they were wasting time, and that some of the men were playing cards, so they started yelling at them about getting back to work, and suddenly everyone forgot about the boxing match.”

“I wish I'd been there,” said Holliday. “I'd have booked bets on the fight and kept all the money when it didn't come off.”

“Well, it's funny,” admitted Roosevelt, “but it leaves us with the same problem we've had from the beginning. They have to leave, but they hate each other so much one won't leave if there's a chance the other can discover something new and valuable by staying behind.”

“Well, as long as we're stuck here, at least you had a pleasant diversion,” said Holliday.

“It's only pleasant in the retelling, Doc,” said Roosevelt. “I like most of the men I know, but these two…” He shook his head. “I'd like to take ’em both on in the ring myself.”

As the words left Roosevelt's mouth, Cope and his men entered the camp. Like Marsh, Cope began directing his men to put the morning's finds in the bone building, and when they had finished he posted two men armed with rifles on either side of the crude door.

“Trusting soul,” remarked Holliday.

“Not without cause,” said Edison. “I wouldn't put it past Marsh to try to sneak in there—him, or one of his men. After all, they've been stealing from and sabotaging each other for years.”

“Well, it's a cluster of superlatives,” said Holliday.

“What are you talking about, Doc?” asked Roosevelt.

“What we have here,” explained Holliday, waving a hand at the camp. “The greatest shootist, the greatest scientist, and the greatest politician on the continent may all die trying to protect the two nastiest paleontologists from destroying each other and maybe the greatest medicine man as well.”

“I'm not the greatest politician,” said Roosevelt. Suddenly he grinned. “Yet.”

“Seriously, what do you suggest, Doc?” said Edison. “It's pretty clear that we can't force them to leave, Ned and I are in no condition to travel anyway, and it's just as obvious that the Comanche have started resurrecting dinosaurs and won't stop until both parties stop desecrating their burial ground.”

“I don't know,” admitted Holliday. “Perhaps we—”

There was a shrill scream of terror from the stable area, followed a moment later by a dozen or more gunshots. Holliday and Roosevelt went off to see what was happening, and returned a few moments later.

“What was it?” asked Edison.

“Damned dinosaur killed one of the horses,” growled Holliday.

“Huge one?”

Roosevelt shook his head. “No, he couldn't have weighed much more than four hundred pounds or so.

“Well, if they kill enough horses, that'll settle whether we're leaving or not,” said Buntline.

“Goddamn it!” said Holliday grimly. “I'm getting mighty sick of paleontologists
and
dinosaurs! After all, a bargain's a bargain!”

“What are you talking about, Doc?” asked Roosevelt, frowning. “
What
bargain?”

“Geronimo made a deal with me,” answered Holliday. “It was a shitty deal, but I agreed to it, and I haven't been keeping my end of the bargain.” He stared off at the dead dinosaur in the stable area. “Enough is enough!”

H
OLLIDAY GOT HIS HORSE
and began riding out of camp in a northwesterly direction.

“I know you're watching me,” he said in a conversational voice when he'd gone a little more than a mile. “If I'm heading in the wrong direction you'd damned well better tell me.”

He felt an urge for a cigar, which puzzled him, as he hadn't smoked in years. He knew what the results would be: a worse coughing seizure than usual. He wrote it off to his body assuming he was going to his death and wanting one last smoke before then.

He thought he'd sing to keep himself company, then realized that he didn't know a single song. He reached for his flask, then decided against it. He wouldn't be able to fill it up again, and there was no sense using it up now when he was sure he'd need it later.

Suddenly he heard a large number of birds starting to chirp and squawk. At first he thought it was another dinosaur, but then he heard the sound of hoofbeats approaching, and a moment later Roosevelt pulled up alongside him.

“Did you really think you were going to do this without me?” demanded the Easterner with a smile.

“Do what?” asked Holliday.

“Whatever it is that you're off to do,” said Roosevelt. He reached into a saddlebag and withdrew one of Edison's weapons. “Here. I thought you might need one of these.”

“And you have the other, I assume?”

“Unless you want them both.”

Holliday stared at his smiling companion. “You seem mighty chipper, especially given that you don't know where you're going.”

“I'm just glad to be away from that madhouse,” replied Roosevelt. “And while we're on the subject, just where
are
we going?’

“We're off to meet with Geronimo's Comanche counterpart,” said Holliday. “He can't possibly be as unreasonable as those two idiots we left behind.”

“That's for damned sure,” said Roosevelt. He shook his head in puzzlement. “I wonder how the history books will treat them? In a way, they're the two greatest scientists America has produced except for Tom.”

“If you consider digging in the dirt for bones an important science,” said Holliday.

“It is, Doc,” said Roosevelt.

“Bah!”

“You're an educated man, Doc,” continued Roosevelt. “You
know
paleontology is important.”

“What is so damned important about knowing monsters used to live here?” said Holliday.

“Something killed them all off and left no evidence,” replied Roosevelt. “And it wasn't Man or any predator walking the earth today. Wouldn't you like to know what it was, so we can avoid the same thing happening to us?”

“It's not going to make much different to
my
life expectancy,” said Holliday.

“Damn it, Doc.”

“All right, all right, knowing it will make a difference,” agreed Holliday. “But knowing how to cure consumption, to take an example I can speak to, will make a quicker and more meaningful difference to quite a few thousand people.”

“Of course it will,” said Roosevelt. “And the day someone cures it, or pneumonia, or purifying stagnant water, or a dozen other things, he or they will rank right up there, just behind Tom. But most of that work is being done in laboratories, in private, and we won't know about it until it's accomplished, whereas Cope and Marsh are publishing every find and every discovery they make.”

“Only to prove that each is better than the other,” noted Holliday.

“Be honest, Doc. Do you think either of them would have accomplished half as much if he didn't hate the other's guts and want to show him up as a fake or an incompetent?”

“No,” admitted Holliday with a heavy sigh. “No, I suppose not.” He frowned. “Which doesn't mean I wouldn't be happy to let ’em kill each other and to hell with paleontology.”

Roosevelt laughed. “It's tempting.”

Holliday allowed himself the luxury of a grin. “The thought of it is damned near as intoxicating as what I have in my flask.” He paused. “The real shame of it is that if I can make any kind of deal with the Comanche, those two bastards will benefit from it. Unless you've got a better idea.”

Roosevelt shook his head. “No, it's got to be done, if indeed we
can
make a deal. Otherwise we're going to be overrun by dinosaurs, and they're not going to stop once they've eaten our two paleontologists.”
Roosevelt stared at Holliday. “How many men could have put a bullet in the eye, and hence the brain, of a raging tyrannosaur.”

Holliday paused a moment in thought. “In my experience, maybe three: Clay Allison, Johnny Ringo, and me. And they say John Wesley Hardin was a crack shot with any kind of weapon, but I never saw it for myself.”

“Then you see why we have to do what we can to get them to send these creatures back to whatever hell they've pulled them out of,” continued Roosevelt.

They rode another few miles, and then Holliday pulled his horse to a stop.

“What is it, Doc?”

“I still don't know where I'm going.” Suddenly he raised his voice and turned toward Apache territory a few hundred miles to the southwest. “
And I hope to hell someone is going to tell me before we waste too much more time!
”

“You really think he can hear you?” asked Roosevelt, dismounting.

“Maybe not with his ears, but yes,” said Holliday. “He's already pulled my fat out of the fire once on this job or assignment or whatever the hell he wants to call it.” He shrugged. “Of course, he told me he wouldn't do it again, but what the hell.” He raised his voice again. “
If he wants this problem solved, he can at least point me in the right direction!
”

“Maybe we're going in the right direction,” suggested Roosevelt. “Maybe that's why he hasn't stopped us.”

Holliday smiled humorously. “That's too direct. His mind doesn't work that way.”

“Well, climb down and give your horse a rest,” said Roosevelt. As Holliday was dismounting, he added, “I forgot to pack any food.”

Holliday looked up. “Sun's still in the eastern half of the sky,” he replied. “Much too early to think of food. If you're hungry maybe an hour before twilight, we'll shoot something small and defenseless.”

“You've already made me feel guilty about eating it,” laughed Roosevelt.

“Okay, we'll shoot something small and defenseless for me. You can go shoot a dinosaur.” Suddenly Holliday smiled. “Just be sure to clean up after yourself.” He began hobbling his horse.

“I see you've learned your lesson,” noted Roosevelt.

“Probably not, but which lesson are you referring to?”

“Tying your reins to a branch.”

“True,” admitted Holliday. “On the other hand, if I'd hobbled him he'd probably have been half a breakfast for the tyrannosaur. If I didn't hate horses so much I'd be quite proud of letting him escape.” He stared at Roosevelt. “What are you grinning at?”

“I'm just imagining Kate Elder's reaction if you spoke like that about her favorite dog or cat.”

“Funny you should mention it,” replied Holliday, sitting down with his back against a broad tree trunk.

“I was right?”

“I have no idea if she liked them.”

“Then I don't understand.”

Holliday smiled. “There was a lot about Kate not to understand. Only animal I ever took a shine to was a dog that used to follow me home from the Oriental Saloon back in Tombstone—so she took one of my pistols when I was, shall we say, indisposed, and tried to kill it.”

Roosevelt frowned. “Did she?”

Holliday shook his head. “She was a lousy shot. But I never saw the dog again.”

“I grew up loving animals,” said Roosevelt.

“Hasn't stopped you from stuffing and mounting enough of them,” said Holliday.

“When I was young it was a way to make them seem alive again,”
replied Roosevelt. “After I got better at it, it became first a science and then at art.”

“You've got an interesting notion of fun, Theodore.”

“So do you.”

Holliday shrugged. “Believe it or not, playing cards isn't much fun,” answered Holliday. “But when you're a dentist, and all your patients go elsewhere when you keep coughing up blood all over them, you do what you can to make a living.”

“Did you like dentistry?”

“I didn't work at it long enough to say,” replied Holliday. “I think I'd have been a good one.” He shrugged again. “But who knows?”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally Roosevelt got up and started doing some stationary exercises.

“Don't you ever stop?” said Holliday.

“Got to keep fit,” answered Roosevelt. “Usually I read at lunch, but I left my books in camp, and besides, we're not eating.”

“You know,” said Holliday, “we've never sat down and discussed books. Some of my pleasantest memories are of arguing the classics with Johnny Ringo. Well,” he amended, “with what he'd become.”

“What did he like?”

“Plato, Cicero, Thucydides,” replied Holliday. “I could never figure out what he saw in
The Republic
.”

“You didn't like it?”

“Liking it has nothing to do with it,” answered Holliday. “The damned thing doesn't work. Too many philosopher kings, not enough street sweepers.”

Roosevelt laughed. “I keep forgetting who I'm traveling with. We'll have to make up for lost time. Do you read much fiction?”

“Mostly just the dime novels, before I tear them up and curse the liars who write them.”

“Well, then, let me tell you about a couple of Russians named Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and an English lady named Austen.”

“I'm aware of them.”

“But you haven't read them?”

Holliday shook his head. “Not yet.” Then he remembered his circumstances and sighed heavily. “Not ever.”

“Never say never,” said Roosevelt, and launched into a rhapsodic discussion of the virtues of the three, and especially of Jane Austen.

Holliday listened intently. It occurred to him that Roosevelt could make almost anything interesting, that his boundless enthusiasm for whatever captured his interest—which sooner or later was almost everything—was infectious. Finally, after an hour, Roosevelt got to his feet.

“I'll be happy to keep talking,” he said. “But it's mid-afternoon already. We might as well keep going.”

“Going where?” asked Holliday with a smile.

Roosevelt came to a stop and frowned. “What do we do if he's not paying attention?”

“If he wants this thing concluded,” said Holliday, suddenly raising his voice, “
he'd damned well better be paying attention
.”

Suddenly Roosevelt looked off in the distance. “Damn!” he said. “
Something
is paying attention!”

“Shit!” said Holliday. “Nothing tries to eat us for a few hours, and it's easy to forget what's walking around the damned countryside.”

He walked to his horse and pulled Edison's weapon out of his saddlebag, while Roosevelt did the same with his own horse.

They could hear branches cracking and see bushes moving, and suddenly the screeching of birds became deafening, but they couldn't see what was approaching them, or even
if
it was approaching.

“What is it?” asked Holliday.

“Something big,” answered Roosevelt. “And probably not a herbivore,
or the birds are panicking for nothing.” Suddenly he frowned. “Something's wrong.”

“Besides the dinosaur?”

“The wind's blowing from him to us,” said Roosevelt. “He couldn't have scented us or the horses. And we've been speaking very quietly.”

“What are you saying, Theodore? That he was
sent
for us?”

“It's a possibility.”

“Well,” said Holliday, hefting his weapon, “he's got a surprise or two coming his way.”

Roosevelt stared at where the sounds were emanating from, A moment later he blinked his eyes very rapidly. “Oh my God!” he muttered.

“What is it?”

“It looks like a tyrannosaur,” said Roosevelt. “But it's twice as big as the giant you killed. There's something wrong here. No carnivore can be that big. He'd starve to death.”

“What are you saying?” demanded Holliday.

“I don't think this thing ever walked the earth,” answered Roosevelt.

The creature finally burst into the open. Holliday estimated his head to be twenty feet above the ground, possibly even higher, and his bulk seemed to almost match that of a brontosaur. Both men began firing their weapons, but the creature ignored them and kept approaching.