Doc - Mary Doria Russell [136]
The boy turned in his saddle to fire again, his face lit by the theater lights: stiff and scared now, but determined.
The slug hit the brim of Wyatt’s hat, flipping it off into the mud.
The kid’s voice broke when he shouted, “Damn!” He reined his horse around hard and dug in with his spurs, bolting for the bridge, just hoping to get out of town now, for every lawman in Dodge was in the street by then, and all of them were shooting at him.
Wyatt was following on foot, sloshing through the mire, and fell making the turn onto Bridge Street. Already down on his knees, he sat back on his haunches. The lower angle brought his target into dark relief against the sky, which was starting to lighten a little because the setting moon was beginning to show between clouds that were breaking up over Colorado. This time Wyatt aimed carefully and took a second shot, but the rider clattered on over the bridge and was gone from sight.
Bat Masterson might be a lying little weasel, but no question, he was game in a fight. He was the first out of the Commie-Q, the first after Wyatt to fire at the shooter, and the first to reach Wyatt’s side now. Huffing from the run, Bat watched the rider disappear and asked, “Who in hell was that joker?”
“Never saw him before,” Wyatt said.
Morg was there a moment later, with John Stauber and Chuck Trask and Charlie Bassett right behind him. Bat gave Wyatt a hand up, and then the rest of the officers were on the scene. Almost as quickly, their women appeared, holding shawls tight around their shoulders, white-faced in the watery moonlight, waiting at the edge of the street to be told whose man had been killed this time.
Morg called, “Go on home! Nobody’s hit.”
The women talked among themselves before going back inside, while Bat told Morg and everybody what had just happened.
“Wyatt was standing on the boardwalk out in front of the Commie-Q, and this kid comes along and opens up on him. I saw the boy through the window—looked right at Wyatt. Right at him! Not angry or anything, just: he had a job to do and he was by-God gonna do it.”
For a time, they all stood around in the slowing drizzle, speculating on who the kid was and what he had against Wyatt, but hell! There were a hundred cowboys Wyatt had bashed or arrested, or both. Could have been any one of them. And that just counted the ones he’d dealt with in Dodge this season. Could have been somebody with a grudge left over from last year. Or from Ellsworth or Wichita, for that matter.
Wyatt didn’t say much, but he never did. Finally Bat declared, “Drinks are on me! Let’s get out of the rain.”
They were on their way back to the Front Street boardwalk when one of the Riney kids came running over from the tollbooth.
“Mr. Earp,” he called, “you hit him, sir! He’s over on the south end of the bridge.”
Wet and shivering, Wyatt stood in the corner of the cell while Doc McCarty examined the whimpering boy’s wound. McCarty said, “I’m afraid it’s mortal, son,” and Wyatt closed his eyes at the news. “What’s your name?” the doctor asked the kid. “Do you have kin we should notify?”
George Hoyt, he turned out to be. Crying, he told McCarty his mother’s address and, snuffling, he asked for a drink. Fat Larry brought in a bottle. Wyatt sat on the bunk, and lifted the boy up by the shoulders, and helped him take a good long swig, and laid him down to rest after that. For a little while, he watched Hoyt sleep.
Then he went back to work.
He knew what folks were saying when he walked his rounds that night, like nothing bad had happened. Butter wouldn’t melt in Wyatt Earp’s mouth. Cool as they come, ole Wyatt.
But he was shook, and bad.
Dime novelists tried to make it seem that frontier lawmen did that kind of thing all the time, but it just wasn’t so—not even in towns like Dodge. Killings were nearly always one idiot shooting another; the police were hardly ever involved directly.