Doc

by Mary Doria Russell

  Kate didn’t mention the letter from Martha Anne because she’d thrown it away. It was for Doc’s own good. He was always bad-tempered and gloomy when that girl wrote to him. Nor did she comment on the look she got from that little Wright bitch when Kate identified herself as Mrs. Holliday and asked for Doc’s mail.

  Frowning, Doc took the large brown envelope from Alexander von Angensperg and opened it carefully. “How thoughtful,” he said quietly, and held up the score to Brahms’ Second Symphony.

  He was still studying it when Kate left. She tended to go out earlier than he did, to look for the night’s best game. She did so that evening serene in the knowledge that she could leave Doc Holliday anytime she pleased, and that he would always take her back.

  Three of a Kind

  When Wyatt left the dentist’s office on the morning of June 10, he had every intention of asking Bat Masterson about Doc Holliday’s suspicion that Johnnie Sanders had been robbed before he died. That said, the notion of figuring out who’d killed the boy never crossed Wyatt’s mind.

  Dead Negroes were a dime a dozen after Reconstruction, and ever since the Little Bighorn, the U.S. Army had been busy making “good Indians” out of as many native men, women, and children as the cavalry could round up and shoot. After what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Sanders back in Wichita, Wyatt simply wasn’t all that surprised by their son’s death. The sad truth was that a half-Indian colored kid like Johnnie was asking to get killed by standing there in his own skin, minding his own business.

  Course, Johnnie wasn’t minding his own business, and Wyatt bitterly regretted the part he’d played in the boy’s demise. Still, even if Doc Holliday was right about what happened, whoever clubbed the kid was long gone. What Wyatt wanted to know was, what happened to the money?

  Maybe that night’s take had been stolen, but the dentist thought the boy had cleared $1,800 just since the end of April. Johnnie started dealing back in October. There might be twice that much somewhere. Three times, even!

  If Wyatt could find that money, Roxana would be within reach. He could enter her and Dick in the rest of the summer’s races, and pay James back out of the winnings. Breed Roxana to Dick in the fall and next year, he’d have a colt and some kind of decent future back in sight.

  So he wanted to find out why Bat thought Johnnie Sanders’ death was an accident. Except Bat was out of town, doing something for the county probably, and by the time Wyatt had established that, a fight broke out in broad daylight just outside the Bon Ton and shots were fired. Morg and Jack and Chuck and Stauber and Charlie came running, straight out of bed and still wearing long johns. Then half a dozen soldiers from Fort Dodge decided to mix in, just for the hell of it, evidently; Wyatt never did work out whose side they were on. Even Fat Larry came lumbering out of the jail and bashed a few brawlers before he had to sit down and hold his chest. The whole business ended up taking the rest of the afternoon. By the time it was over, Wyatt was back on night duty, looking at three straight shifts with no sleep and no extra pay for his trouble, apart from his cut of the fines.

  By dawn the next day, he was so whipped he couldn’t think straight, and that was probably why he was stupid enough to show up at Bessie’s back door with a filthy, drunk brunette clutching an oilskin.

  Bessie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The girl was a two-bit streetwalker so low, she couldn’t even afford the rent on a crib—just throw that greasy oilskin on the dirt and let the cowboys ride.

  “What do you call yourself?” Bessie asked the girl.

  “Mattie,” the girl mumbled. “Mattie Blaylock.”

  “How long you been working, Mattie?”

  “Since November.”

  “Of 1867,” Bessie muttered. She shot a hard look at Wyatt, who suddenly found his shoes interesting. “You sit down here for a minute, Mattie,” Bessie said before yelling, “James! Your brother brought us a girl.”

  Drying his hands on a bar towel, James stepped outside and took it all in. The hooker, slumped against the back stairs. Bessie, tight-faced, arms crossed. Wyatt, miserable.

  “I’m sorry, James. I caught a vaquero trying to cut her,” Wyatt told him. “I threw him in jail, but she keeps following me, and … I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Wyatt,” Bessie whispered fiercely, “your brother and I run a clean house—”

  “I’m not saying give her a job!” Wyatt dug into his pocket and handed over some crumpled bills. “Just let her sleep here?”

  “Here? She’s probably got fleas! Not to mention—”

  James put his good arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I’ll take care of this, honey. Go on up to bed. Wyatt, there’s bread and jam in the kitchen. Get yourself something to eat. I’ll be back soon.”

  Pulling her shawl tight, Bessie gave Wyatt one last mean look and left without another word. Murmuring encouragement, James got the girl on her feet and steered her off toward China Joe’s, still holding that nasty oilcloth to her bosom.

  Wyatt watched them go, his mind blank. He was past thinking, but even if he’d just spent a week taking a rest cure, he wouldn’t have known what to do about Mattie Blaylock. Anything with men or horses, Wyatt handled it, but women? Well, Doc Holliday was right about that much. It was a comfort and a support to have his brothers near. Women were James’ job, and he was good at it.

  After a few muddled moments, Wyatt went inside simply because James had told him to, and because he liked bread and jam.

  For a while he stood dumbly in the whorehouse kitchen, glad none of the girls had come in to see what was going on. There were mirrors all over the place in Bessie’s, and he caught sight of himself in the one hung above the sink. Listening hard for footsteps, he decided it was safe and lifted his upper lip in something like a smile. Wincing at what he saw, he sat down heavily.

  The Frowner, his mother called him. Well, it was that or look like an idiot.

  Hell. What difference did it make after all these years? He was used to things the way they were. He could hardly imagine what it might be like to laugh or smile freely. On the other hand, there was the awful memory of the tooth that went bad in ’73 while he was hunting buffalo …

  They say you forget pain, but Wyatt sure as hell hadn’t forgotten being so desperate to make it stop, he came close to putting the barrel of a pistol to the tooth and shooting it out of his mouth. In the end, he let Ed Masterson hammer it out, using part of an elk horn as a chisel and a pistol butt for a mallet. If Doc Holliday could prevent that from ever happening again, it would be worth any amount of money.

  Which was why, a little at a time, Wyatt was talking himself into a plan that would let him pay James back and pay the dentist, too.

  Fat Larry didn’t see any harm in city deputies working two jobs, and the saloons liked having a badge in the house. John Stauber and Chuck Trask were both dealing faro part-time, and they were making a good buck. Wyatt thought that was kind of wrong—a lawman could cheat all he wanted, bash anyone who caught him at it, and say it was for disturbing the peace. But there was no rule said you had to cheat. Drunks generally did their own losing.

  With his mind just about made up, Wyatt tried to summon the gumption to fry a couple of eggs but decided to rest his eyes for a few minutes. Next thing he knew, James was back and it was full daylight.

  “I took her over to China Joe’s,” James told him. “When she’s clean, she can come back here and sleep off whatever she’s using. Joe thinks it might be opium. I think laudanum, more like.”

  “Thanks, James.”

  “Soon as she sobers up, she’s back out on the street, Wyatt. Bessie’s not gonna let her work here. You eat anything?”

  “Too tired.” He pushed himself to his feet and made himself say what he’d been thinking before he dozed off. “Listen, James. About the money I owe you—”

  “Forget it.”

  “No! I’m gonna pay you back. I don’t want trouble with Bessie over it. Dog Kelley’s looking for a part-time faro dealer
. He offered me a job. It’s two bucks an hour, plus ten percent commission, and I won’t need a bank.” James looked at him, not saying anything. Finally, Wyatt answered the question his brother wouldn’t ask. “Just ’cause they’re serving liquor don’t mean I got to drink it.”

  James shrugged with the shoulder that still worked, but his eyes were narrow. “I guess,” he said. “If you say so, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt caught up with Bat Masterson a couple of nights later. The whole conversation got off on the wrong foot, and it was mostly Wyatt’s fault.

  Bat was coming out of the Iowa House, where he was keeping his latest girl. Even at a distance and in a crowd like the one on Front Street, there was no mistaking the sheriff of Ford County. He looked like that Irish clown fella, the one who wore yellow pants and purple shirts and a red tie. “Bat,” Wyatt called, genuinely puzzled, “why in hell do you dress like that?”

  “Jesus, Wyatt! Lower your voice,” Bat said, looking around to see who else had heard. “Just because you don’t care about clothes don’t mean the rest of us have to look bad.”

  “Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you—”

  “Well, you found me now. And anyways, I don’t answer to you anymore. What do you want?”

  “I want my money,” Wyatt said bluntly, annoyed by Bat’s tone. “There’s eighteen hundred dollars—”

  “What? Did you bet on Concannon? Jesus! What kinda odds did you get?”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s Concannon?”

  “Nobody. Forget it,” Bat snapped. “So I don’t owe you eighteen hundred dollars?”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  Now both of them were confused. Wyatt shook his head and held up a hand. “All right. Just listen: Johnnie Sanders might’ve been robbed the night he was murdered—”

  “Who said he was murdered? He just got—”

  “He was at least eighteen hundred bucks to the good and—”

  “Who told you that?”

  “What difference does it make? Was anybody flashing a lot of cash after the fire?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know!” Bat cried. “You know what it’s like around here, Wyatt. Somebody’s always flashing a lot of cash. Anyways, it was a long time ago.”

  “Three years is a long time, Bat. Three weeks ain’t. You check his room after? Was there anything there?”

  “We didn’t find any money, that’s for sure. Maybe he was carrying it and it got burned up in the fire.”

  “Some of it would have been in coin.”

  “Well, we didn’t find any puddles of silver, I can tell you that much! Look, Wyatt, you know yourself the Elephant Barn was a fire just waiting to happen. I told Ham and told him—”

  “That’s another thing. What was Johnnie doing in that barn?”

  Bat blinked. “Hell if I know.” But he was ashamed and looked it. He also knew that once Wyatt got hold of something, he wasn’t about to let it go. The best policy was to own up. “I’ll be honest with you, Wyatt. I didn’t really pay all that much attention. It was inside city limits. It was Fat Larry’s problem, not mine.”

  “So what were you doing there?”

  “Larry was out of town and Morg asked me. I did what I could, but it wasn’t my jurisdiction. Jesus, what’s got you all stirred up about this now?”

  “That dentist said there was an ante-mortem blow to the head and—”

  “Hell,” Bat said, dismissing this information with a wave. “Holliday’s always talking about his aunties. Half the time he don’t make any sense at all—”

  “Ante-mortem, Bat. It’s legal. It means ‘before death.’ ”

  Young Sheriff Masterson made an honest if brief effort to grasp the implications of what he’d just been told, but the effort failed to yield any conceptual breakthroughs. In 1878, Bat was, after all, just a modestly educated twenty-four-year-old kid who’d won a county-wide popularity contest by three votes. He had read one fewer law book than Wyatt himself. And, in any case, it would be nearly a century before proper police procedure for handling crimes went much beyond (1) arrest a suspect within a few hours and (2) beat a confession out of the bastard.

  “Well, hell,” Bat cried. “Before? After? What difference does it make? The kid was dead when we got there. Dead is dead! And anyways, I wouldn’t believe Holliday if he told me sugar’s sweet and Kansas is flat. He is a quarrelsome drunk and a card sharp—I saw him damn near blow the head off a cattleman myself! He’s been run out of every town he ever lived in. He didn’t tell you that, I guess! Do you know why Holliday was in Texas?” Bat demanded. “Do you know why he had to leave Georgia?”

  Wyatt had heard some of it before, down in Fort Griffin, but Bat’s indictment went on for some time. When he finished, the sheriff of Ford County had taken back the moral high ground.

  “Half the bad men in Texas are Georgia night riders on the run,” he told Wyatt. “Why, that rebel sonofabitch probably killed Johnnie Sanders himself! That’s why he’s telling you this cock-and-bull story about robbery and eighteen hundred dollars. He’s playing you for a fool, Wyatt! He acts like he’s real polite, but he’s laughing up his sleeve at all of us. Ask him about those niggers he killed back in Georgia. Why, he’s killed so many men, he don’t even count the greasers down in Texas! Go on, Wyatt. Ask him about that!”

  When Wyatt found the dentist, Holliday was sitting alone in Delmonico’s, a set of half-dealt dummy hands arrayed before him on the table. It was getting late for the supper trade. There were only a few people in the restaurant. Nora was taking an order from a salesman going over his account book in the corner. A couple of cattlemen were working some figures in the back.

  Wyatt stood in front of him. “How much is true, Doc?”

  Holliday looked up. “Evenin’, Wyatt.” He frowned. “How much of what is true?”

  “The stories about you. The rumors. What Bat says.”

  “You will have to be more specific, sir,” the dentist said peaceably. “Sheriff Masterson, in my observation, is a man much given to chat and loose talk. Who knows what lurid tales he’s spreadin’?”

  “He says you’re wanted in Dallas and Denver and Atlanta for murders. He says you gutted a gambler in a knife fight out in California. He says you gunned down three Negroes back in Georgia, and that’s why you came west. He says you’ve killed so many men, you don’t even count Mexicans.”

  Holliday was a poker player. His reaction might have been an elaborate pantomime, meant to throw an opponent off, though it appeared genuine enough. The dentist stared, openmouthed, and shook his head, eyes wide. He started on a laugh, but it got tangled up in a cough. He fished out a handkerchief to hold over his mouth and then just sat there, waiting to see what his lungs decided. Finally he cleared his throat and put the handkerchief back in his pocket.

  “Well, now,” he said softly. “Seems that the cup of my iniquity overflows! If I am such a bad man, I wonder why Sheriff Masterson has not arrested me for my manifold misdeeds? Ought to be some sort of reward offered, wouldn’t you think?”

  Which was a good point.

  Doc took a careful sip of bourbon. “The dust this time of day,” he said in explanation and set the glass down so carefully, it was all the more startling when he rose without warning.

  There it was: a feline suddenness that could make you think he’d pull a knife and slice you dead, just like Bat said. Alarmed, the salesman quickly gathered his things and left. The cattlemen sat back and watched, ready for whatever might happen.

  Wyatt felt the calm come over him. Try it, he thought.

  “We are of a height,” the dentist observed. “Six feet?”

  Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. “Near enough.”

  Doc stepped back a pace and took in the physique that had controlled six-hitch freight teams from the age of seventeen. The woodcutter’s shoulders. The thighs solid with saddle muscle. “I would wager that you have fifty, sixty pounds on me,” he said judiciously. “How much do you weigh, Wyatt? Hun
dred and ninety, maybe? Two hundred?”

  “About that. What diff—”

  Doc sat carefully, gathered the deck, and shuffled. “I was never big,” he said, beginning another round of dummies, “but since this illness took hold, I haven’t been able to keep any weight on. Doesn’t matter what I eat.”

  He went around again with deft efficiency. Ten of clubs, flush developing. A second nine. Seven, possible straight. “I don’t believe you are gettin’ enough rest, Wyatt. You look tired. Please. Have a seat.”

  Wyatt pulled out a chair, irritated. The cattlemen got bored and went back to their negotiations.

  “Let us consider the plight of the rattlesnake,” Doc suggested softly, eyes on the cards. “The rattlesnake is feared and loathed, and yet he has no claws, no legs. He does not look for fights and gives fair warning if he is threatened, but if he is attacked, he cannot flee. All he has is his mouth …”

  Partly, it was the fancy way he talked. Partly, it was the slow, slurry sound of Georgia. Mostly, it was just that the dentist didn’t think like anybody else. Wyatt looked away and back again. “I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about, Doc.”

  “Reputation, reputation, reputation,” Doc recited, slapping out cards one by one. “It is idle and most false, oft got without merit and lost without deservin’.” He looked up. “You ever take a beatin’, Wyatt?” Doc turned away, coughed hard once, and cleared his throat again. “I don’t mean take a sucker punch. I mean, did you ever lie on the dirt and think, Why, this big, ignorant sonofabitch is about to kick me to death. I will die in this jerkwater town, just for bein’ able to count.” The slate-blue gaze came up: steady and humorless. “Ever take a beatin’ like that?”

  “Not … for a long time.”

  Doc’s brows rose at that. “Ever been shot?” he asked next.

  “No.”

  “I was. Last year. A quarrel over cards—which I did not start,” Doc emphasized, his voice rising momentarily. “No one expected me to live, myself included. I make a narrow target, but if a bullet comes my way? Chances are, it’ll hit something important. So I do what I can to make myself a less invitin’ mark.”