Doc - Mary Doria Russell [97]
He went around again with deft efficiency. Ten of clubs, flush developing. A second nine. Seven, possible straight. “I don’t believe you are gettin’ enough rest, Wyatt. You look tired. Please. Have a seat.”
Wyatt pulled out a chair, irritated. The cattlemen got bored and went back to their negotiations.
“Let us consider the plight of the rattlesnake,” Doc suggested softly, eyes on the cards. “The rattlesnake is feared and loathed, and yet he has no claws, no legs. He does not look for fights and gives fair warning if he is threatened, but if he is attacked, he cannot flee. All he has is his mouth …”
Partly, it was the fancy way he talked. Partly, it was the slow, slurry sound of Georgia. Mostly, it was just that the dentist didn’t think like anybody else. Wyatt looked away and back again. “I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about, Doc.”
“Reputation, reputation, reputation,” Doc recited, slapping out cards one by one. “It is idle and most false, oft got without merit and lost without deservin’.” He looked up. “You ever take a beatin’, Wyatt?” Doc turned away, coughed hard once, and cleared his throat again. “I don’t mean take a sucker punch. I mean, did you ever lie on the dirt and think, Why, this big, ignorant sonofabitch is about to kick me to death. I will die in this jerkwater town, just for bein’ able to count.” The slate-blue gaze came up: steady and humorless. “Ever take a beatin’ like that?”
“Not … for a long time.”
Doc’s brows rose at that. “Ever been shot?” he asked next.
“No.”
“I was. Last year. A quarrel over cards—which I did not start,” Doc emphasized, his voice rising momentarily. “No one expected me to live, myself included. I make a narrow target, but if a bullet comes my way? Chances are, it’ll hit something important. So I do what I can to make myself a less invitin’ mark.”
He dealt again. “There’s the flush busted,” he observed. “You may not have noticed it, Wyatt, but the sheriff of Ford County is a shockin’ gossip. Why, you tell Bat Masterson any kind of story at all and no matter how foolish it is, you can just about depend on it bein’ all around town before dawn.” Doc looked up, as though reminded of something. “Is it true, I wonder, what they say about you and Michael O’Rourke? Word is, you faced down a lynch mob and saved his sorry neck for a proper execution.” Doc’s voice, always soft, became even quieter. “Or was it your brother Virgil did that?”
There was just the slightest of tells, but Doc saw it.
“Well, now,” Doc said reasonably. “Easy mistake to make, you Earp boys lookin’ so much alike. Still, a reputation can be a useful thing. Odds are better for all you boys if you don’t argue the details. What Virgil does gives you an edge. What you do gives Morgan one.”
Another card.
“You still considerin’ that dental work I recommended?” Doc asked. “No rush, of course, although at least four of your remaining teeth are doomed, and I’d appreciate the business. I am a damn fine dentist, if I say so myself, but I fear Miss Kate is right. There is no money in it out here. Poker, by contrast, can be a good and honest livin’. Takes nerve, not muscle.”
He studied the hands.
“My edge is that I can count,” he said quietly, “whereas the men I play against are rarely overburdened by education.” He laid a seven on the nines. “No help,” he said, “but sometimes a pair of nines is all you need … This will not fill,” he predicted, and added a jack to the eight-high straight. “See? Busted.”
Another card, and he paused, eyes on Wyatt’s own. When John Henry Holliday spoke again, his voice was almost too soft to hear, and there was no bravado to be seen or heard.
“I killed a man in Denison. It was awful. He wanted me dead, Wyatt. He went for his gun and—Everyone agreed it was self-defense. The charges were dropped. You can wire and ask. Those boys back in Georgia? Nobody got hurt. It was just pups, barkin’ at one another. I have paid fines for gamblin’. That is the extent of my