Doc - Mary Doria Russell [158]
To a man, they were stunned by Belle’s notion.
The priest was delighted, naturally, and thanked her for her generosity and for her excellent suggestion. He did not notice that Morgan was crestfallen, for that cash was his brother’s, but what could Wyatt say? It’s mine. I want to buy a horse. And Doc felt punished for his pride, for he had guessed correctly and located the money but had never anticipated this. Compassion and apology mixed in his eyes, brows lifted in inquiry, he looked at Wyatt: Do you want me to say something?
Wyatt let out a small, hopeless breath and shook his head slightly. He stood to go, dropping two bits on the table to pay his share of the bill.
“Johnnie was a real good reader,” he told von Angensperg. “Name the liberry after him.”
“It is a fine legacy for a boy who died too young,” the priest said, standing to shake Wyatt’s hand. “John Horse Sanders will be remembered.”
No Help
Kate knew his tricks. Doc would stop to have her roll him a cigarette, or pause to comment on a brawl spilling onto the street, or decide he wanted to study the clouds for signs of rain. Getting back to the house from Delmonico’s took most of an hour. You don’t fool me none, she wanted to tell him, but a presumption of strength was the only thing John Henry Holliday asked of her and that, by God, is what she gave him.
Six months of overwork had undermined him. A simple cold had damn near killed him. The chest pain was so bad, he needed laudanum to dull it. Even so, she couldn’t get him into bed. Hunched in his chair, elbows on his knees, staring at the cheap floral carpet, Doc didn’t even lift his head to mumble, “Kate. Please. Jus’ do as I ask.”
“But why? Is it your father’s money? Doc, you don’t even like your father!”
He shook his head slightly.
“Then why bother? Grier ain’t worth your time!”
“Don’ care.”
“You ain’t making sense,” she informed him, folding her arms. “And anyways, what good is it to beat him? His credit’s no good.”
“Doesn’ matter.”
This is fever, she decided. Hoping he’d lose interest if she delayed the game, she threw up her hands. “All right! Whatever you say, but I need time to set it up.”
“Get Bob Wright, too.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You ain’t serious,” she scoffed.
Slate blue eyes rose, humorless and unblinking.
“Doc,” she said cautiously, “Bob Wright’s good. You can’t play him! Hell, you shouldn’t play at all, not like this …”
As his rebuttal he held out a handkerchief streaked with bright arterial red. When he spoke, his voice was soft and empty of drama. “ ’S now or never, darlin’.”
The argument went on, but nothing Kate said made a difference, for Doc’s logic was impeccable if unspoken. It was his dispassionate clinical judgment that he would not live to see his twenty-seventh Christmas. Why hold back? What was left to him but one last grand gesture?
On the fifth of September 1878, it came down to this. Kate had made him a promise. He held her to it.
Later she would rage at him, at his stupidity and arrogance and pride. She would swear that if she’d known what he intended, she never would have agreed to help. “Too late now” was all he’d say, but he would say it to her back, as she left him.
“I’m putting a game together,” Kate told Elijah Garrett Grier in mid-September. “Stud poker. Twenty-dollar ante. No limit. You in?”
Naturally, he hesitated, for he simply didn’t trust her. Twice that summer, Eli had complained to Bessie Earp about the Hungarian hooker, but Bessie only shrugged and looked at her husband.
“Katie runs her own business,” James told the captain. “The house just takes a cut for laundry and the room.” Kate came and went whenever she pleased, James explained, and did what she liked with whoever caught her eye. “My opinion?” James offered. “That’s what customers like about her.”
Maybe so, for she wasn’t that pretty, and she sure as hell didn’t flatter a man. Whatever the reason, Eli Grier wanted her, but the bitch just toyed with him. Once, back in July,