Weird West 04 - The Doctor and the Dinosaurs

by Mike Resnick

  HOLLIDAY 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.”
<
br />   “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.

  “Go for the eyes!” said Holliday, tossing Edison's weapon aside and drawing his pistol as Roosevelt ran to his horse and retrieved his rifle.

  Holliday fired three quick shots to no effect. Roosevelt's could hear the thunk! as his rifle bullet slammed into an eye, but the creature didn't even blink or in any way acknowledge it had been hit.

  And then, suddenly, a small man in a loincloth was standing between them and the creature.

  Roosevelt stared intently at the man's back. “Geronimo?”

  “Can't be,” said Holliday. “Geronimo's a six-footer. This guy is maybe five feet on his tiptoes.”

  The monster was just two steps away now, and the small man raised his hand and started chanting in an unfamiliar tongue. The monster turned to him and opened its mouth wide as if to swallow him whole—

  —and then two things happened simultaneously: the dinosaur froze in mid-movement, and the small man became visibly smaller. He uttered one more chant, and the creature suddenly crumbled and turned into a gray, powdery, shapeless dust that fell to the ground and covered it.

  The man turned to face Holliday and Roosevelt.

  “Damn!” exclaimed Holliday. “It is you! What the hell happened to you? You've got to be a foot shorter!”

  “It has taken all of my powers and some of my essence to hold the Comanche medicine men at bay,” answered Geronimo. “I lost even more just now as I defeated the creature created by the minds and will of the Comanche.”

  “I knew that thing could never have existed!” said Roosevelt.

  “You are wrong, Roosevelt,” said Geronimo. “It existed here and now.” He turned to Holliday. “I told you the last time we met that I would not help you again.”

  “But you did, and we're grateful.”

  “And see what has become of me,” said Geronimo. “What is left of me,” he corrected.

  “Why did you come, then?” asked Holliday.

  “Because I have been observing, and the two madmen will never leave on their own. It is up to you two to treat with the Comanche, to have them call off their monsters. There is no other way.”

  “We were on our way to do just that, but we have nothing to offer them,” said Roosevelt.

  “And I don't think we can make Cope and Marsh stop digging here, short of killing them,” added Holliday. “And while at this point I have no serious objection to killing them, the problem is that Cody's already gone back East, and he'll be taking tales of the dinosaur resurrections with him. There will be still more madmen anxious to come here.”

  “You will do what must be done,” said Geronimo. “That is why I have chosen you.”

  “We'll do what we can,” said Holliday. “But don't hold your breath. Now, where are we headed and who do we want to parlay with?”

  Geronimo pointed to the north. “You will find them there.”

  “That could be a thousand square miles,” said Roosevelt. “Can you be more exact?”

  “You will go where I pointed, and you will find them, or they you.”

  “And who's the medicine man?”

  “They have seven, but the most powerful, the one you must treat with, you will call Tall Bear.”

  “What does he look like, so we'll recognize him?” asked Holliday.

  “You will know him,” said Geronimo.

  Holliday stared at him, then blinked. “You're fadin
g away.”

  “I have saved you,” said Geronimo, his voice becoming a hollow echo. “I can do no more.”

  “You can tell us—” began Holliday, but then Roosevelt reached out and held his arm.

  “Forget it, Doc. He's gone.”

  “I know,” said Holliday. “‘That is why I have chosen you,’” he repeated sardonically. “As if there was anyone else left to choose.”

  “We're all he's got,” agreed Roosevelt. “In terms of getting rid of the dinosaurs, we're all anyone's got.”

  Holliday walked over to the pile of dust that had been a humongous carnivore just a moment earlier, ran his foot through it, kicked some of it up in the air and watched it float back down to the ground. “This is the kind of dream I used to have when I'd drunk too much.”

  “I had a dream like that right before I went on my first date with a girl,” answered Roosevelt.

  “Oh, well, if the horses haven't fainted dead away, we might as well start going to…to wherever the hell we're going.”

  Both horses were heavily lathered, but hadn't broken free of their tethers and hobbles, and a moment later Holliday and Roosevelt were riding north.

  “Shit!” snapped Holliday after another half hour. “Suddenly I'm seeing Comanche medicine men behind every bush.”

  “Well, it's better than seeing another dinosaur,” answered Roosevelt.

  They'd gone another five miles when Roosevelt looked up at the sky.

  “It's going to be twilight in another half hour or so,” he said. “Do you want to find some spot with water for the horses where we can bed down for the night?”

  “No,” answered Holliday. “I don't think we have to.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  Holliday nodded toward the foliage to the left of the trail. “We've got company.”

  THEY CONTINUED TO RIDE NORTH. The Comanche—a dozen to their right, another dozen to their left—walked their horses in the same direction, never getting closer than twenty yards, never moving faster or slower than Holliday and Roosevelt.

  “What do they want?” mused Roosevelt aloud.