Doctor and the Kid, The (A Weird West Tale) (Weird West Tales) (19 page)

She suddenly looked uneasy. “I confess that I never thought of that.”

“You've killed eight men,” said Holliday. “You've been damned lucky. I suggest you quit now, while you're still alive and unharmed.”

“I didn't get into this for the money,” she replied. “That's just been a pleasant windfall. I got into it to kill the man who murdered my husband.”

Holliday realized he wasn't going to convince her while they were standing out there in the sun next to three corpses, but he made up his mind to try again later. He took the horse by the harness and led it over to Beckett's body, found he wasn't strong enough to lift it into the surrey without her help, and when that was done they loaded the other two.

“By the way,” she said as they drove back into town,
“you
killed the other two. If there really were prices on them, I insist that the money go to you.”

“I wasn't bounty hunting,” said Holliday. “I was just protecting a friend.”

“It comes to the same thing,” she said. “They're dead. Either you accept the money, or the government can keep it.”

“Under those conditions…” he said.

It was when he delivered the three bodies to Pat Garrett's office that he found out that they were worth a thousand dollars apiece.

That night he hit the faro table in the back of the Blue Peacock and ran his two thousand up to eighty-seven hundred before the sun came up and the game ended, and he realized, as he counted his winnings, that he had a big enough bankroll that he wouldn't have to face Billy the Kid after all.

“Y

“You were in a dangerous situation, and you didn't believe me,” answered Holliday.

“I just want to tell you that I understand, and you were right to do so.”

“As long as you're admitting I was right about one thing, perhaps you'll agree that I'm right about another—that it's time to retire from the business, or at least to steer clear of the Kid.”

“That's more than business, Doc,” she said seriously. “It's vengeance.”

“Leave it to the Lord,” said Holliday.

“Did
you
ever?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I'm headed for hell anyway. You might not be.”

“I owe it to Dwayne.”

“Your husband?” asked Holliday, and she nodded. “Have you considered that you owe it to him to stay alive?”

“I plan to stay alive,” she told him.

Something in her expression said that further arguing, at least at this time, would be useless, so he sighed and began eating his toast.

Mabel Grimsley stopped by with a hot pot of coffee and refilled their cups.

“I want to thank you again, Doc,” she said. “Business has doubled since I started advertising that you eat here.” She smiled. “If you could just get your friend Wyatt Earp to pay you a visit…”

“He's a married man, making his fortune up north,” replied Holliday.

“Of course, if you could get the Kid to stop by, that would be even better.”

“I'll mention it the next time I see him.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“As long as you're here, what do I owe you?”

“Your money's no good here, Doc.”

“Then I thank you again.”

She performed an awkward curtsy, picked up the coffee pot, and retreated to the kitchen.

“I hear you got very lucky last night,” said Charlotte, adding sugar to her coffee and stirring it.

“I prefer to think of it as my skill dominating all the lesser talents,” he said with a smile. “But yes, I had a lucky night.”

“Be sure not to lose it tonight,” she said, returning his smile.

“I won't be playing again,” replied Holliday. “I needed a certain amount of money to pay for the sanitarium where I plan to spend my final months. This will just about cover it. I had this much once before, and I was very foolish with it. I won't be again.”

“Then will you be going back to Leadville?”

“Eventually,” he said.

“Eventually?” she repeated, frowning.

“As soon as Tom and Ned go back.”

“Ah, you're just waiting for your friends!” she said. “I never mentioned it, but there was a time when I thought you were here to do me out of the reward for Billy the Kid, to kill him before I could.”

“Now why would I want to kill him?” said Holliday. “We're both notorious killers, cut from the same cloth.”

“Damn it, Doc,” complained Charlotte, “why do you say things like that?”

“Like what?”

“That you're a villain, and you're dying tomorrow, and you're going straight to hell. Don't you know how it upsets people?”

“Not most of the people I associate with,” he replied. “And I suppose I say it because if I don't they will. I apologize if I've upset you.”

She sighed deeply. “What are you doing out here, Doc? With your education and good manners, you should be repairing teeth back in Georgia.” Suddenly she smiled. “If you enjoy causing pain, what better profession than a dentist?”

Holliday couldn't help laughing. “You've got me pegged, Mrs. Branson, ma'am.”

“Seriously, was it the consumption?”

He nodded. “You'd be surprised how quickly your clientele vanishes when you keep coughing blood on them.”

“And no one minds it at a poker table?” she continued.

“When there's a few hundred dollars in the middle,” he replied with a smile, “no one much cares if it's got blood on it or not.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Let's change the subject. I shouldn't be talking about blood and disease when a lady's eating.”

“Actually, I just finished,” said Charlotte. “But I agree: let's change the subject.”

“Shall we talk about longevity?” suggested Holliday.

She stared at him curiously. “What about it?”

“I think if you want to practice it, you'll go back to the Grand and stay in it for a few days.”

“Why?”

“Because the last man you brought in wasn't connected to the Kid, but yesterday we cashed in on three of his friends. Anyone who was around saw us unload them from the surrey and carry them into Garrett's office.”

“Why just a few days? Why not a month, or a year?” she said. “I can't hide forever, nor do I wish to.”

“He may come into town to find out who killed them, but he's in a profession where his friends and confederates get killed all the time. He won't spend more than a day looking for you, and he won't know one woman from another. If no one can point you out to him, he'll get tired of looking and go back to wherever he stays when he's in the area, probably some other ranch out of town.”

She considered what he said. “Four days, no more,” she announced.

“Four should do it, though a week would be better.”

“Four,” she insisted. “I came here to kill him, not hide from him.”

“All right,” said Holliday. “Four it is.”

He finished his coffee, then helped her to her feet and walked her back to the Grand Hotel. They stopped along the raised wooden sidewalk while she admired some recently arrived Eastern fashions in a dress store, bought a book and some magazines at the general store (“If I'm to be a shut-in for four days, I am
not
going to just sit there staring at a wall.”), and finally arrived in the lobby twenty minutes after leaving Mabel Grimsley's.

As she climbed the stairs to the second floor, Edison was coming down. He greeted her, stood aside to let her pass, and then continued down on to the lobby.

“Good morning, Doc.”

“Hello, Tom.”

“I heard you were doing well at the Blue Peacock last night,” said Edison. “I hope your luck didn't change.”

“It held.”

“Good.”

“We can all go back to Leadville,” continued Holliday. “I've got enough for the sanitarium. Well, almost enough, and I'll stay sober at the tables long enough to make up the rest of it.” A quick smile. “Or else I'll just die a little sooner.”

“Well, you can go back, of course, but Ned and I will be staying here awhile longer. Or if not here, at our lab and factory in Tombstone.”

“Why?” asked Holliday. “You came here to help me. Well, I've got enough money now, almost enough anyway, and even if I didn't I don't need your help against the Kid any longer.”

“Doc, we came here to try to break a spell that Hook Nose had cast,” said Edison. “In case you've forgotten, that's what the United States government is paying me to do—counteract the medicine men's magic. I just had my first success in the two years I've been out here. Geronimo and Hook Nose are in the area, or at least have made their presence manifest here, so it makes sense that this is where I should combat them. The ultrasonic device worked on White Eagle, but he was just one medicine man, and not the most powerful of them. I have to stay here and keep working.”

“Well, maybe I'll stick around for a couple of weeks,” said Holliday. “They've got some mighty poor faro players here, and you never know when you might need someone to protect your back.”

“With all due respect to your unquestioned skill, I don't think a gun is going to be very effective against the men I'm here to neutralize.”

“Well, I'll stay a little longer anyway.”
Long enough to talk Charlotte into getting into a stagecoach and going back north before she gets her head blown off.

“Up to you,” said Edison. He turned and headed to the front door. “I'm off to the post office to see if some of the equipment I ordered has arrived yet.”

“See you later,” said Holliday. He walked up to the desk. “Got a safe?”

“Yes.”

He pulled the previous night's winnings out of a pocket, counted off eighty-five hundred dollars, and handed it to the clerk.

“I want a receipt for it.”

“Of course, Doc,” said the clerk, counting it again and then scribbling down a receipt.

“And if it goes missing, you are going to find out just how slowly I can kill a man.”

“There's no need to say that, Doc,” said the clerk in hurt—and mildly terrified—tones.

“There's every need to say it,” replied Holliday. “Just see to it that there's no need to demonstrate it.”

He put the receipt in a pocket and walked out into the hot New Mexican sun. He stood motionless for a moment, making up his mind which of the many watering holes to go to, and finally decided on the Blue Peacock, feeling it was only fair to spend his money there since he'd won so much of their other patrons' the previous night.

He walked across the dry, dusty street, stepping back as a team of horses trotted past him, pulling a stagecoach behind them. He tipped his hat to a trio of local women who were walking down the wooden sidewalk, pretended to shoot a small boy with his finger and clutched at his chest as the boy fired an imaginary bullet into it, and finally reached the Blue Peacock. It was only about a third full, since it was still early in the day, and the bartender was serving sandwiches as well as whiskey and beer.

He'd barely sat down when a voice behind him said, “I been looking for you.”

“And now you've found me,” said Holliday. “Sit down and have a drink.”

“I'm mad as hell!” growled the Kid, sitting down opposite Holliday.

“I'm desolate to hear it,” said Holliday, then realized that the Kid had probably never heard the word “desolate,” and amended his statement: “I'm sorry to hear it.”

“You killed three of my friends!”

“They probably weren't real friends,” said Holliday with a shrug.

“What the hell were you doing out there in the first place?” demanded the Kid.

Holliday filled a glass, pushed it across the table to the Kid, and signaled for another.

“I went out there to talk to you,” replied Holliday.

“What about?”

“Nothing in particular. I'm not employed, and I only know three or four people in town.”

“Why did you kill them?” demanded the Kid. “I know it had to be you. No one else could have done it. Those men were good.”

You
had
to deduce it
, Holliday realized.
You couldn't very well walk up to Garrett and ask who claimed the bounties. You two aren't exactly on speaking terms. And that means you don't know about Charlotte.

“I'll be honest,” lied Holliday. “They didn't recognize me. They were sure I'd come out to collect the bounties on them when you weren't around to weigh in on their side, and they drew on me before I could set them straight. What else could I do?”

The Kid stared long and hard at him, then finally nodded his head. “Makes sense.”

“Then we're friends again?”

“At least we ain't enemies.”

“I hope your excursion with the estimable Mr. Brady was successful?”

“Do you use them words just to show off?” said the Kid with a frown. “I know you been to school back East.”

“I'll try to express myself more simply,” replied Holliday. “I hope you and Brady got whatever you were after.”

“Mostly. We'd heard where there were thirty head of cattle. Turns out there were only eighteen.” The Kid sipped his drink as the bartender arrived with a glass for Holliday. “But we took ‘em anyway.”

“It's so dry and barren out here,” said Holliday. “Back where I grew up, fifteen acres could support fifteen head of cattle. Here it barely supports one, and he'll look skinny as hell.”

“Makes you wonder why the Indians keep it or the United States wants it,” agreed the Kid.

“You ever think of going back across the Mississippi?”

The Kid shook his head. “I used to think of it all the time. Then I killed a man who was bullying me when I was fifteen, and a few more at sixteen, and suddenly I wasn't Henry McCarty or Henry Antrim any more, I was Billy the Kid, and too damned many people were out to kill me. So I figured there are less people out here than back East, so I'm less likely to be backshot here.”

“I take it you don't worry about being frontshot, to coin a word?” asked Holliday. The Kid just stared at him. “No, I guess not.” Holliday paused long enough to fill his glass and take a drink from it, “How'd you come to be Billy Bonney?”

“It sounds nice, kind of like a song or a poem. So I use it. Or I did, until everyone started calling me the Kid.” Suddenly he smiled. “I reckon I'll be thirty by the time they stop.”

“Could be,” agreed Holliday. “It's a pretty famous name.”

“I don't read too good, but I love reading about myself in all the dime novels. I even saw one where you and me teamed up.”

“Anything's possible.”

“I saw another where we shot it out in the street.”

“Amazing,” said Holliday with a smile. “Bill Hickok has one shootout in the main street of the town he's in, and suddenly every damned writer, most of whom have never been on this side of the Mississippi, assumes every gunfight takes place in the street.”