Doc - Mary Doria Russell [175]
“Nothing,” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”
She wore it once, and it looked pretty on her, too, but after that she put it away.
Then, last night, before he left for work, he told Mattie that Big George Hoover had invited them over for dinner on Sunday. He thought Mattie would like to wear one of the dresses Doc Holliday had helped her pick out, and maybe that necklace from Topeka, but she acted like Wyatt was asking her to do something unreasonable. She looked at him like he was some kind of idiot even to think about going to dinner at the Hoovers’.
Wyatt asked if it was because Margaret Hoover used to be—well, Maggie Carnahan, and maybe that brought back bad memories or something. Mattie just shook her head like he was so stupid, it wasn’t worth trying to explain it to him. Hell, he thought. I might not be the smartest man in Kansas, but I ain’t that dumb.
Course, it turned out that was exactly how dumb he was, but at the time he was thinking that any effort to be good to Mattie seemed to ricochet back at him. She’d look suspicious and annoyed. “Why are you acting so nice?” she’d ask, like she knew he was faking. And it had just occurred to him—right when he was walking into that saloon—if you think niceness is a fraud, then maybe you think only meanness is real. So maybe Mattie would be happier if he belted her and called her a low, shameless harlot because she’d believe that, except the idea of hitting a woman—
He never finished the thought, suddenly aware that he’d just been surrounded, disarmed, and was about to be killed with his own pistol by a heavyset, middle-aged man with eyes like stones.
“I guess things’re different when you’re not up against a kid half your age and half your size, eh, Earp?”
I’m dead, Wyatt thought, weirdly calm, but certain this was no bluff.
“He don’t look so tough now, do he, boys?” the man was saying.
There was a murmur of grinning agreement, and one of the cowboys said, “He sure don’t, Mr. Driskill!”
“Are you Jesse Driskill, sir?” Wyatt asked.
There was a chorus of hoots.
“Oh, it’s sir now! Ain’t that sweet, boys? Ain’t that nice and polite? No, you sonofabitch, I ain’t Jesse. I’m his brother. I’m Tobias Driskill, and that was my boy you bashed, peckerhead.”
A few paces behind him, a wooden chair scraped against the floor. Everyone backed off a little and left Wyatt standing alone.
Hell, he thought. Shot in the back, like Bill Hickok, and dime novelists will have the good of it.
“Think you’ve got enough friends to stand with you here, Tobie?” asked a honeyed Georgia voice. “Or is Achilles—alone—too many?”
“Doc? Doc Holliday?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“This ain’t your fight, Doc,” Driskill told him.
“I beg to differ, Tobie. Deputy Earp is a patient of mine. He still owes me four dollars.”
“He’s worth a lot more to me dead! Hell, I’ll pay you the four bucks—”
Nobody even noticed that Doc had a gun in his hand until he fired both barrels of a two-shot Deringer into the floor.
Wyatt got over the shock soonest. It was three steps to the bar. An instant later he had the shotgun in his hands.
Doc murmured, “Well, now, there’s a surprise …”
And everyone thought he meant that he’d made them all jump, or that Wyatt Earp had just evened up the odds some, pulling a scattergun out. In point of fact, John Henry Holliday was discovering that excitement could temporarily inhibit the need to cough and make his chest pain simply … disappear. And in that astounding adrenaline-fueled state of grace, he spoke again, softly but fluently, his voice musical and gentle and clear.
“That is a very generous offer, Tobie, and frankly, I could use the money, but I think you’ll find that Mr. Earp will decline your kindness. He is unusually scrupulous in such matters … Now, as it happens, I was a witness to your boy’s arrest, Tobe. The youngster was in his cups, and