by Matt Braun
“Don’t know and didn’t ask. Just told me to bring you.”
“Well, then, let’s not keep the marshal waiting. Lead the way, Dub.”
Holliday followed him out the door.
“You ever hear of Kid Colton?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Never got crosswise of him any whichaway? Cards? Women?”
“Not to my knowledge, Marshal. Why do you ask?”
“He means to kill you.”
Frank Mott was seated at a battered rolltop desk. A spittoon was strategically located near his foot, and the walls of his office were decorated with wanted dodgers. His chair squeaked in protest as he leaned back, arms folded. Holliday looked at him with a bemused expression.
“Why would a total stranger want to kill me? Until now, I never heard his name.”
Mott snorted. “You’re no stranger to the Kid. Everybody in creation knows your reputation.”
“Perhaps so,” Holliday acceded. “But that doesn’t explain the why of it.”
“Hell, no mystery there. Damn fool wants to be known as the man who killed Doc Holliday. Figures that’ll make his reputation bigger’n yours.”
The concept was foreign to anything Holliday might have imagined. To kill another man simply to build a reputation seemed to him somehow farcical, even asinine. He spread his hands.
“This Colton?” he asked. “By any chance is he a simpleton?”
“Nothin’ stupid about the Kid.” Mott leaned forward, rang the spittoon with a squirt of tobacco juice. “He’s just ornery, mean, no-account. A regular little sidewinder.”
“You know him well, then?”
“Yeah, he rides for a cattle outfit over on the North Fork River. Fancies himself a badman pistolero. Only killed one man in his whole life—a Mexican.”
“How old is he?”
“No more’n twenty, maybe younger. Name’s Wilbur, but he calls himself the Kid. You know, after Billy the Kid.”
Everyone knew of William Bonney, dubbed Billy the Kid, who had made national headlines during the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Holliday nodded. “How did you hear of his … intentions?”
“Word gets around.” Mott shifted his cud to the off cheek. “He’s been braggin’ on it ever since you hit town. Guess he finally got up the nerve. He aims to try it tonight.”
“Will he call me out? A fair fight?”
“Oh, shore, no backshootin’ for the Kid. He wants to be notorious, same as you.”
Holliday considered a moment. “You pique my curiosity, Marshal. Why the friendly warning?”
“More a practical matter,” Mott said equably. “I was hopin’ you’d listen to reason. Maybe catch the next train out.”
“I think not,” Holliday said. “Perhaps you could reason with Mr. Colton.”
“Hotheaded little squirt wouldn’t listen. He already put his brag out. Just be a waste of time.”
“You could disarm him, take him into custody.”
Mott sighed heavily. “Dumb shit wouldn’t come along peaceable. I’d have to kill him.”
“I see.” Holliday held his gaze. “From the sound of it, you prefer that I kill him. Or am I mistaken?”
“Don’t care to say one way or the other. Whatever you do, just make sure it’s on the up and up.”
“In other words, kill him fair and square.”
“Your words, Mr. Holliday, not mine.”
“Well, in any event, I thank you for the warning. Good day, Marshal.”
On the street Holliday wondered if he’d heard the truth. From all appearances, he had been designated to rid Trinidad of a troublesome misfit. But the personal irony of it struck him even more forcefully.
He was now a bullseye for aspiring gunmen. A target.
The Criterion was the finest gaming parlor in town. High rollers frequented the establishment, and those who followed the gambling circuit made it their headquarters. Hardly a night passed without fortunes being won and lost.
Holliday sat with his back to the wall. There were five other men at the table, and the game was into its third hour. By rough estimate, he calculated that he was almost a thousand dollars ahead. He thought it was more luck than concentration on the cards, or the players. His eyes were glued to the door.
Kid Colton swaggered in around nine o’clock. He was young, with a peach-fuzz mustache, short and slim, bright-eyed with liquor. He wore a brace of pistols in a double buscadero holster rig, the gun belt studded with silver conchas. The jinglebobs on his spurs chimed musically as he walked to the bar and ordered whiskey. The men standing nearby quietly moved away from him.
From the poker table, Holliday saw the Kid darting glances at him in the back bar mirror. He thought the Kid looked nervous, and suspected he was fortifying himself with whiskey courage. One eye on the bar, he collected his cards as a hand of five-card draw was dealt. He found himself holding a full house, jacks over fours, and raised the limit. Three players dropped out, and on the draw, he stood pat. The remaining two players each took one card.
The Kid downed a second shot of whiskey. He turned from the bar, skirting a roulette table, and crossed the room. His eyes were fixed on Holliday, and the jangle of his spurs resounded like church bells as the crowd fell silent. Everyone knew who he was and why he was there, and they waited to see how it would play out. He halted a few paces from the poker table.
“Holliday,” he said in a flat voice. “I’m Kid Colton.”
“Yes, I know,” Holliday said, nodding absently. “Be so kind as to wait a moment. I have the winning hand.”
The Kid flushed. “You deaf or something? I’m callin’ you out!”
Holliday rolled his eyes. “‘O death, where is thy sting?’”
“What’s that you say?”
“Corinthians. Chapter fifteen, verse fifty-five. Shall I have it engraved on your tombstone?”
“You smart-mouth sonovabitch!”
The other players hurled themselves to the floor. All in a motion, the Kid pulled both pistols, thumbing the hammers as he cleared leather. Holliday, who was still seated, seemingly produced the Colt Lightning by some feat of legerdemain. He fired across the table, squeezing off two shots in the space of a heartbeat. The slugs punched through the Kid’s breastbone.
Jolted by the impact, the Kid windmilled backward. The pistol dropped from his left hand, but his right arm swung upward, and he fired. A bullet plowed into the ceiling, and the lamp over the table swayed, casting shadowed waves of light. Holliday shot him again, a bright red rosette stitched in the center of his shirt pocket. He stiffened, erect as a wooden soldier, and toppled to the floor. His sphincter voided in death.
Holliday got to his feet. He peered over the table at the body, and it occurred to him that Wilbur Colton had died an ignominious death. Not for honor, or in answer to an insult, but rather in a foolhardy attempt to claim some measure of immortality. The saddest part was that fame of a sort would attend the death. Kid Colton, though not in the way he intended, would make the headlines. Briefly.
The game resumed as the body was carted away. Holliday bet the limit and the other players hastily folded. They had no idea if he was bluffing, or actually held a full house. But they wisely refrained from calling a pat hand.
Though none of them remarked on it until later, they all agreed that Kid Colton had foolishly defied the odds. His wager was against death itself.
CHAPTER 32
Holliday finished shaving. He selected a beige suit from his wardrobe, and a tie the color of dark chocolate. The room was chilly from a late-September cold snap, and he hurriedly slipped into his pants and shirt. He took another shot of bourbon for good measure.
The window from his room afforded a view of the distant mountains. While he knotted his tie, he stared out over the adobe structures of Old Town. Once a sleepy village in northern New Mexico, Las Vegas was located a hundred miles south of Raton Pass and the Colorado border. The town was now end-of-track for the Santa Fe.
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br /> After strapping on his guns, Holliday shrugged into his suit jacket. He inspected himself in the mirror, making a final adjustment to his tie, and collected his hat off a wall peg. Downstairs he started across the lobby, which was furnished in the Spanish style and warmed by the blaze from a fireplace. The clerk greeted him with a diffident smile.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Holliday. I was just reading about you.”
“Nothing too derogatory, I trust.”
“No, sir, just the opposite. Not often we have a gentleman of your standing staying with us.”
The clerk handed him a copy of the Police Gazette. Holliday scanned the front-page headline, and nodded. “Thank you most kindly. I’ll read it over breakfast.”
“The press sure follows your exploits, Mr. Holliday. You’re right up there with Buffalo Bill.”
“Yes, I travel in rarefied company.”
Holliday entered the dining room. He took a table by the window, ordering his usual breakfast. After the waitress brought coffee, he dosed it with a shot from his flask. Then, unfolding the paper, he slowly shook his head, staring at the headline. DOC HOLLIDAY GUNFIGHT SENDS ANOTHER SOUL TO ETERNITY.
The article dealt with a shooting that had taken place almost a month ago. At the time, Holliday was headquartered in the town of Otero, the first end-of-track depot established by the Santa Fe in New Mexico Territory. A dispute with a cardsharp ended in gunfire, and Holliday was exonerated on the grounds of self-defense. After considerable hyperbole devoted to the shooting, the article went on to review Holliday’s career as a Western gunman. The score, according to the reporter, now stood at twenty-four dead men.
Holliday pushed the paper aside. His opinion of Eastern journalists was further eroded by their flagrant exaggeration, often outright lies. The waitress brought his breakfast, and as he cracked open a soft-boiled egg, he tried to bring the number into sharper perspective. He never kept count, but he knew the score in the Police Gazette was nothing more than a bald-faced invention. A closer count, though he’d long ago lost track, would be on the order of eleven, perhaps twelve. He thought it irresponsible of the press to sensationalize, and inflate the numbers. But then, they lied about Bill Cody as well.
Thinking about it, Holliday wondered how the national press kept itself informed as to his whereabouts. Shortly after the shooting in Otero, the Santa Fe had laid track into Las Vegas, and he had moved on to the new terminus. The town was situated in the foothills of the southern Sangre de Cristo mountains, hardly more than an outpost for sheep herders and cattle ranchers in the district. The Spanish influence was apparent everywhere, in the architecture as well as the customs of the people. Apart from Anglo merchants, the population was largely Mexican.
All that had changed with the arrival of the railroad. Old Town, the original settlement, was now bordered on the west by the Santa Fe depot and rail yards. On the opposite side of the tracks, what was quickly dubbed New Town sprang to life virtually overnight. The sporting crowd moved south, bag and baggage, and the natives watched with amazement as saloons, gaming dives, and whorehouses were erected in a frenzy of construction. Las Vegas, in short order, became a boomtown, flooded with people and trade brought by the railroad. The sporting district ran wild day and night.
A major part of the boom stemmed from future plans of the Santa Fe. The railroad was furiously extending track along a line that curved down the Rio Grande Valley and on into Albuquerque. Farther west, at the town of Rincon, the line would branch, with one fork to El Paso, in Texas, and the other to Deming, in southwest New Mexico. By 1881, scarcely two years away, the Santa Fe planned to forge a transcontinental link with the Southern Pacific, in California. The flurry of building brought thousands of people and millions of dollars into the territory.
Holliday prospered on the influx of trade. He spent his nights in the sporting district, trimming high rollers drawn by the boom. Yet he took lodging in Old Town, at a well-kept adobe hotel catering to New Mexicans. The old part of Las Vegas seemed to him a quaint frieze out of the past, somehow reminiscent of life in the South before the Civil War. The pace was slower, the people were unstintingly cordial, with a gracious air totally foreign to the hustle and bustle of New Town. He often thought he’d stepped backward in time, to a lost world. A place of manners, and genteel refinement.
The desk clerk entered the dining room as Holliday lingered over a second cup of coffee. He hurried across to the table, his features somewhat abashed, waving an envelope. He offered Holliday a lame smile.
“I started talking about that newspaper article and completely forgot, Mr. Holliday. A letter came for you in the morning post.”
Holliday was momentarily nonplussed. He wondered how Mattie had managed to locate him in New Mexico, and why she would write. Then, accepting the envelope, he noted the handwriting and was even more astounded. The letter was from Kate.
“Thank you for remembering, George. I appreciate your courtesy.”
“I won’t forget next time, Mr. Holliday. You can depend on it.”
When the clerk moved away, Holliday stared at the envelope for a long moment. He could think of no good news from Kate, or any reason for her to write. He took a sip of laced coffee, noting postmarks indicating the letter had been forwarded from Trinidad to Otero to Las Vegas. The postal service, as well as the Police Gazette, seemed to know of his whereabouts. He tore open the envelope.
September 10, 1879
Dear Doc,
Surprise! Bet you never expected to get a letter from yours truly (that’s me). I sweet-talked Wyatt Earp into telling me you were in Trinidad. Believe me, it was like pulling teeth!
Anyway, here’s why I decided to write. I got to thinking things over, and you were right and I was wrong. A man’s got a right to expect that his woman won’t fool around, or get drunk and make an ass out of herself in public. I ought to have listened and not let you run away mad. I could just cut my tongue out.
We always had lots of fun, Doc. Maybe we’re not the best match under the sun, but we suit each other more than most. I’d like to make amends, and get back together, and pick up where we left off. You give the go-ahead and I promise to behave myself, just like you wanted. Write me and let me know what you think.
I miss you and want to come back. Hope you feel mutual.
Love & Kisses!
Kate
Holliday lit a cigarillo. Her words were conciliatory, but something about the letter rang false. He asked himself why she had waited almost five months to write. Then, glancing again at the date, it suddenly made sense. The summer trailing season was about to end, and she was facing a hard winter in Dodge City. A hard winter with no cowhands to pay for her services.
The thought occurred that she was looking for a meal ticket. He examined it, and found it a reasonable explanation for her abrupt change of heart. The tone of her letter had about it a forced sincerity, and between the lines, he discerned the wiles of a desperate woman. He had never known her to apologize, or willingly eat crow. But he had often known her to twist the truth to advantage.
Holliday wadded the letter into a ball. He placed it in an ashtray, struck a match, and set it afire. The paper flared, burning brightly, disintegrating into charred flakes. He thought it a wise decision.
Life without Kate was a new dawning every day.
Center Street was the main thoroughfare of New Town. Whenever he crossed into the sporting district, Holliday was struck by a sense of moving from the past into the future. Weathered adobe on one side of the tracks and ripsawed lumber, hastily splashed with whitewash, on the other. The contrast was somewhat like a lady rubbing shoulders with a whore.
Early that afternoon Holliday made his way to the Occidental Gaming Parlor. The place was owned by Jim O’Farrel, a toughnut Irishman who ran the classiest dive in town. All of the equipment was new, with the gaming tables opposite a gleaming mahogany bar. The saloon girls wore spangly outfits, short on the bottom and skimpy on the top. A piano player enlivened the a
tmosphere with rinky-dink tunes.
Trade was unusually slow when Holliday came through the door. Dealers were idle at the gaming tables, and there were only two men at the bar. He caught their reflection in the back bar mirror, startled by familiar faces. One was Joshua Webb, who had served with him in the Dodge City militia during the aborted railroad war. The other was Dave Rudabaugh, the train robber with a talent for eluding the law. He thought them an unlikely pair.
“Look here!” Webb turned from the bar with a wide grin. “Doc Holliday in the pink.”
“Good to see you, Josh,” Holliday said, then nodded to Rudabaugh. “Long time since the last time, Dave. Where was it, Fort Griffin?”
“Think so,” Rudabaugh mused. “I recollect I’d pulled a job and somebody was doggin’ my tracks. More’n likely it was Bat Masterson.”
“A fearless lawman,” Holliday observed wryly. “Josh and I were under his command in the late, great railroad war. He led us merrily to defeat.”
Webb laughed. “Bat wasn’t cut out to be a general.”
“Or a lawdog,” Rudabaugh added. “I’ve outrun him six ways to Sunday. He’s easy to slip past.”
“Bat’s a politician,” Webb said. “For my money, Wyatt Earp’s got him beat hands down as a lawman. Strictly no contest.”
Rudabaugh grunted sourly. “Guess you haven’t met Virgil yet, Wyatt’s older brother. Town marshal over in Prescott, and nobody to mess with. Toughest sonovabitch in Arizona Territory.”
“Have you met his younger brothers?” Holliday asked. “Wyatt once told me he has brothers who are marshals in Montana, or Wyoming. I gather the entire family wears a badge.”
“Don’t care to meet ’em,” Rudabaugh replied. “I try to steer clear of lawdogs. Bastards got no sense of humor.”
Holliday looked at Webb. “That leaves you in strange company, Josh. I recall you’ve worn a badge on occasion.”
Webb and Rudabaugh exchanged a quick glance. “I gave up law work,” Webb said after a moment. “Think I’ll take a fling at the cattle business.”