Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [24]
‘who had the kindness to set him up for it, the bastard!’ she added.
‘Then where is he now? I must go to him!’
‘I’d not advise it, Sugar,’ said Kate, her heart of brass now more or less won over, ‘seein’ as how Wyatt Earp’s jest got through arrestin’ him.’
‘Arrested? But what on earth for?’
"Cause Wyatt didn’t see fit to disabuse ’em of the notion that he was Holliday.’
‘But why?’
‘God knows, Molasses,’ Kate admitted, ‘but I’d say it was a fair bet that, like always, he was lookin’ out for his fine friend, here. Kind of drawin’ the Clantons’ fire.’
‘Onto the Doctor? But that’s awful!’
‘Now don’t you go worryin’ none, little lady,’ interjected Holliday. ‘If he’s with Wyatt, he couldn’t be no safer. Only man as I ever respected,’ he explained.
Now that was a strange friendship: born of favours more or less accidentally received in the course of mayhem and general carnage, he supposed. But there it was. And, oddly, though they were, as you might say, on the opposite sides of the law, it had lasted through a score of cow-towns they had tamed together.
So now... ‘What do you ladies say to a little three-handed game of chance?’ he enquired.
After all, he didn’t want to waste the entire evening...
13
The Red Hand of Tradition
Meanwhile, the Doctor, still spluttering with inexorable indignation at his captors, was having it firmly and forcibly explained to him that if he so much as put his interfering snout outside the gaol-house before Holliday could be persuaded to leave town – when the matter of mistaken identity could safely be resolved to universal rejoicing and jocular back-slapping – then, certain as a possum goes with cold potatoes, he would get it shot from his fool face by four of the toughest characters as ever put pincer to toe-nail.
‘Don’t mistake the Clantons none,’ warned Bat. ‘Just because, for some cock-a-mamie reason, you got away with it the once! O.K. – maybe they’re a mite sponge-witted an’
slow-spoken to your way of thinkin’, but that don’t decelerate ’em none when it comes to backshootin’ an’
side-swipin’ an’ such! An’ fer another thing, they got Seth with ’em – an’ he’s about the slimiest crittur ever got trod by human foot!’
This was a long speech for Bat, and he appealed to Wyatt to continue the argument...
‘Main thing is though,’ said Jehovah’s sidekick, ‘that they got their Pa behind ’em – which is a situation that personally I would never seek. Because the said Pa Clanton is jest about the nastiest pater familias a growin’ boy could go in holy terror of! An’ he ain’t about to relish this laughable little set-back, but no-how. Now, his business with Doc Holliday is kind of a private matter concernin’
the premature demise of his eldest. But his business with me is that I claim the God-given right to stop him takin’
over the whole county for his personal purposes – which are downright unpleasant!’
‘Rustlin’,’ said Bat.
The Doctor listened – but couldn’t hear anything himself, so relaxed again.
‘An’ horse thievin’, an’ stage hold-ups, an’ bullion robbery,’ continued Bat; ‘an’ they do say,’ he lowered his voice, ‘that he’s defrauded the tax-office a time or two...’
‘Too many slap-happy returns,’ confirmed Wyatt, ‘an’
him standin’ for mayor, an’ all!’
‘As well as murder, an’ all,’ continued Bat.
‘And all? And all what?’ asked the Doctor.
‘The feller drinks!’ said Wyatt.
‘Well now, Wyatt, so does Holliday,’ objected Bat. ‘You got to admit that...’
‘That’s different,’ said Wyatt. ‘He’s my friend.’
And he set to cleaning his revolver with a consecrated oil-rag...
And simultaneously with this succinct exposition of the casus belli, the boys in the bar-room were busy scaring the hell out of that disenchanted dude, Jazz-fingers Steven Regret, late of the intergalactic force for good, and dedicated to fighting evil in all its forms.
The trouble was, he hadn’t encountered it in this form before; not combined with what seemed to him to be boneheaded, crass stupidity!
‘For God’s sake!’ he exploded at length. ‘Why can’t you listen? For