Doc - Mary Doria Russell [11]
In letters home, John Henry made comical stories of occasional arrests and fines for gambling, as though these were the result of informal Saturday night card games, but there were hints of his frightening new life. At the risk of descent into unscientific generalization, I must report to you that ninety percent of Texans give the other ten percent a bad name, he told Martha Anne after an exceptionally unpleasant encounter that he left undescribed. To Robert, he wrote, In Texas, rocks are considered inadequate weaponry during school yard scuffles. Dallas children carry a brace of loaded pistols, a concealed Deringer, and a six-inch toadsticker in one boot. That’s the girls, of course. Boys bring howitzers to class.
Had John Henry been more forthcoming about the sporting life, Martha Anne’s concern for his safety would have increased, but she might not have been quite as scandalized as he feared. Standards of conduct had loosened some, after the war. Martha Anne had learned to play poker from little Sophie Walton at John Henry’s side, and she herself could be ruthless at the table. The Hollidays had always maintained a fairly cavalier attitude toward weapons, liquor, and high-stakes gambling.
A murder indictment, on the other hand …
Well, John Henry never mentioned that, not even indirectly. Several witnesses agreed: the other man drew first. The charges were dropped. John Henry was badly shaken by the event, but he never would have worried the folks at home about such a thing.
When the Fates took their next shot at him, it was in the guise of a bad-tempered gambler named Henry Kahn who sat down at John Henry’s faro table in July of 1877.
Coughing and irritable, young Dr. Holliday caught Mr. Kahn monkeying with the discards and suggested twice that he quit it. Sweating and belligerent in the Texas heat, Mr. Kahn was disinclined to do as he was told. Dr. Holliday, perhaps unwisely, widened the scope of his remarks.
Mr. Kahn left the table, apparently chastened. Ten minutes later, he returned with a pistol. Someone shouted, “Holliday! Behind you!” Before the dentist could fully rise to face his assailant, a shot was fired, and John Henry lay bleeding on the floor. Kahn walked out of the saloon without a word and left town before he could be arrested.
A friend in Dallas telegraphed word of the assault to the Atlanta Hollidays, informing them that newspaper reports of John Henry’s death were inaccurate but that the wound was very serious and might yet prove fatal. John Stiles Holliday wanted to travel west immediately to attend his nephew, but the aging physician was talked out of it by his son George, whom the distraught family sent to John Henry’s bedside in Texas.
George was shocked by his cousin’s pallor and thinness; these he put down to the terrible wound until John Henry admitted that he’d rarely seen the curative western sunlight or breathed the fresh dry western air since leaving Atlanta four years earlier. Far from home, living among uncongenial strangers on the rawest edge of the American frontier, John Henry had allowed his habits to deteriorate. He had become accustomed to playing cards all night in smoky gambling halls. In lieu of the nutritious meals and healthful wine his uncle had prescribed, he lived on saloon snacks like boiled eggs, and tried to calm his worsening cough with immoderate amounts of bourbon. He was not well even before Henry Kahn tried to kill him.
The howling Fates were sure they had him this time.
By December, however, after five long months of rest under Cousin George’s watchful eye, John Henry was back on his feet, though he would need a walking stick, off and on, for the rest of his life. He was not robust—never had been, never would be—but the leaden tubercular fatigue had lifted. His appetite returned. He put on a little weight and had more energy. The chest pain had eased and his cough was drier, not