Doc - Mary Doria Russell [22]
That afternoon, he stood by himself and waited for Doc Holliday to make his slow and careful way out of what remained of the barn.
“Johnnie Sanders,” Doc told him quietly.
The mobile face crumpled. “No!” Eddie cried. “Ah, Christ … Now, that’s a pity.”
Hats off, they watched silently as the crisped and blackened body was carried past. A few yards away, Bat Masterson had returned to his earlier theme for the edification of the assembled citizens.
“I told Ham Bell this would happen! I said, One of these days, Ham, some drover’s going to pass out with a cigarette in his hand and set the whole damn barn alight. You just wait and see, I told him. Only a matter of time ’til that barn goes up in smoke!”
“Lucky it didn’t take the whole town with it,” Eddie muttered.
He had survived the Great Chicago Fire as a boy. Now twenty-two, Eddie Foy retained a morbid anxiety about such things. It was a concern John Henry Holliday shared, as would anyone who’d seen what Sherman did to Georgia. Like old Chicago and antebellum Atlanta, Dodge City was all wood. Wooden walls, shingle roofs, wooden floors. Plank sidewalks and galleries. Everywhere you looked: wood, waiting to burn.
“This burg could use a fire brigade,” said Eddie.
“Could’ve used one last night,” Doc agreed.
Morgan went back to the jail to make his report to Fat Larry. Bat headed for the newspaper offices to be sure his name got into the stories. Eddie stuck with Doc, though he had to slow down considerably to match the gimpy Georgian’s pace. Usually Doc contrived to give the impression that he was a gentleman in no particular hurry who enjoyed a leisurely stroll through town. Today he was winded and limping before they’d got to the corner of Bridge and Front.
Eddie had more sense than to rag the man about that. If you were going to be friends with Doc Holliday, there were things you did well not to notice. That raw Christ-awful cough. His weight, what there was of it. The lameness. Doc had accumulated a fair number of infirmities for a man so young, but insisted he was in better health than he’d enjoyed in some time. That told you a lot, right there.
The two of them were recent arrivals in Dodge. Eddie had just landed a good gig headlining a song-and-dance show at the Comique Theater, twice nightly during the cattle season. Doc Holliday sometimes ran a faro game there; it was a temporary arrangement—just something to tide him and his lady friend over until he could get a dental practice going. Doc enjoyed Eddie’s act. Eddie liked that Doc got all the jokes.
“Look at them, now, will you,” Eddie said, stopping so Doc could rest. “Shameless, I call it.”
Driven out of the barn by the fire, Hamilton Bell’s little rat terriers were roaming the town. One of them had taken a shine to Dog Kelley’s brindle greyhound bitch, who was standing in the middle of Front Street, bemused by the attention. The terrier tried several approaches without achieving much in the way of satisfaction.
“It would appear that his reach has exceeded his grasp,” Doc observed, keeping his breath shallow.
“Ah,” said Eddie, “but you have to admire the ambition, now, don’t you.”
The greyhound got bored and wandered away, leaving a deeply disappointed terrier to reconsider his aspirations.
“Don’t wait on me,” Doc told Eddie. “I’ve got errands.”
“See you tonight, will we?”
“Depends. I’ll have to see what Miss Kate has planned.”
Eddie grinned. “Give my love to herself, then, won’t you!” he called, and did a little jig step before he set off briskly,