Doc - Mary Doria Russell [176]
By that time they could hear boots pounding toward them as city policemen converged on the saloon from bars all over town.
“Ah! Morgan!” Doc cried genially. “And Sheriff Masterson! Evenin’, Chuck. I was just explainin’ the fine points of Dodge City law enforcement to Mr. Tobias Driskill here, after he tried to jump Wyatt with this contemptible collection of illiterate, bean-eating white trash—”
With a brilliant smile, Bat stepped between Doc and the Driskill men.
“Don’t mind him! He’s just drunk,” Bat said smoothly. “How ’bout you boys hang up your guns right over there and have a drink on me? Wyatt, I think I can straighten this out for you. Mr. Driskill, may I have a word?”
In years to come, after the gunfight in Tombstone, when the myths and lies began to accumulate, the story of that evening in Dodge would be repeated with Shakespearean advantages.
Several bars were confidently put forward as the location of the confrontation, and at least three bartenders claimed to have been eyewitnesses to the event. The man who was actually working that night never talked about it, being in no hurry to tell anyone that Tobias Driskill shoved a gun in his nose and told him to go take a piss. Which he did.
Several men later claimed to be the faro dealer Doc bucked, but only one of them admitted that he was too scared to move when the Driskill gang ordered everybody to get out. “They might be trouble,” Doc told the dealer quietly, “but I will shoot you if you shut this game down while I’m ahead.” And don’t think Doc didn’t pocket his winnings before he stepped up on Wyatt’s behalf.
Eventually Tobias Driskill had not six cowhands with him but twenty-five Texas desperadoes, all taunting Wyatt Earp with guns drawn and about to mow him down in a hail of lead when—at the last possible moment—the ferocious killer Doc Holliday jumped up, a chromed Colt in each hand, cursing the Texans for white-livered cowards, intimidating them just long enough for Wyatt to draw his entirely legendary Ned Buntline Special. Routinely promoted to full marshal in these tales, Wyatt pistol-whipped Driskill and commanded the other Texans to “shed their hardware.” A foolish cowboy raised his piece. Doc Holliday instantly shot him dead. Terrified despite overwhelming odds in their favor, the remaining two dozen Texans complied with the order to drop their weapons. Fifty revolvers were said to have been picked up from the street after Wyatt and Doc had arrested the entire gang and marched them off to the Dodge City hoosegow.
Nothing remotely like that was reported in either the Dodge City Times or the Ford County Globe, nor is there any court record of such a large number of cowboys being arrested and booked all at once—before, during, or after 1878. And yet, for the next fifty years, whenever anyone asked why he stuck with Doc Holliday long after the dentist was far more trouble than he was worth, Wyatt Earp would always give the same unadorned answer. “Doc saved my life in Dodge.”
At the time, however, the whole thing was over so quickly that Wyatt only came to understand its significance during the long hours of silence he would soon spend waiting for the dentist to die, listening to a clock tick Doc’s life away.
I shoulda thanked him, Wyatt would think.
Too late, too late, too late …
For instead of expressing gratitude as soon as he and Morg and Doc left the saloon, Wyatt asked, “Where’d you get that gun, Doc?”
The eastern sky was beginning to lighten. The day was going to be gray and rainy, but between the approaching dawn and the lamplight from the saloon, Morgan could see that Doc was trembling. “Come on, Wyatt. Let it go!”
“Where’d you get that gun, Doc?” Wyatt