Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [28]
But by now, Main Street was beginning to fill with a rebarbative rabble of recidivists who wanted to know what in hell was going on in there so’s a man couldn’t get a drink when he was all tuckered out, playin’ guitars, an’
such...?
And this was the tinder, apt for a demagogue’s match, which the Clantons found assembled, as they finally emerged to promote their already revealed plans for the Doctor’s discomforture.
Seth wasn’t with them, no, sir! He was a gunfighter, wasn’t he? And by no means about to become involved in a vulgar lynching, calculated to attract the disapproval of Wyatt Earp. That’s not what he was paid for, for God’s sake!
But Steven unavoidably was present; and Ike now dragged him forwards, and presented him to the ready-made audience for their consideration.
‘You know what we got here, friends?’ he enquired.
They didn’t at once, no. And they cared less. Some dude, they supposed, bound for the high jump – and probably serve the feller right, at that! But what they wanted right now was a drink, thank you; so, if the Clantons wouldn’t mind stepping aside, they would be grateful!
But Ike was not the man to let a matter drop, once he’d got fairly started.
‘This here sneering son of Satan is a friend of Doc Holliday’s,’ he persevered, ‘the rat-featured dentist in whose presence no decent tooth is safe in its bed. And who, furthermore, killed our brother,’ he remembered, having been prompted by Phineas.
‘Well now, since the aforementioned is currently cowering in custody behind the guns of your bent sheriff, and his crony, the sanctimonious Earp, what we propose to do is this: we – that is, my remaining brothers and I – are going to stretch this feller’s neck a little; to see if that won’t make Holliday come out an’ face us in a law-abidin’
manner, instead of cowering cravenly in custody behind the guns of your bent...’
‘You already said that...’ counselled Billy.
‘Well, anyway, you get the idea? So while we’re adoin’
that, I suggest that you all express your outraged feelings by smashing into Holliday’s sadistic emporium, and availing yourselves of its valuable contents; which he won’t likely be needin’ no more...’
‘Once we’ve finished with him that is...’ contributed Phineas.
‘They know that, Phin – they know that! God’s sake, they ain’t plumb stupid!’
Of course they weren’t – well, not completely plumb.
One of them presently raised the shout of ‘Sure!’ and the cry was soon taken up. So while Steven was rope-hauled, hog-tied along Main Street to his fatal appointment, the extras lit torches – for some reason – and then swirled angrily in and out of the toothery; bearing off such items as bone-forceps, scalpels, probes, and – once they got around to it – that pride of Doc’s life, the late death-chair from San Quentin.
That would teach him wouldn’t it?
Sure! Sure!
It is never easy to explain to a girl who has recently been the recipient of your heart-held promise to settle down and set your slippers out to smoulder, that, on the other hand, you are about to leave town for an indefinite period. The apparent contradiction tends to attract criticism; and Doc Holliday was finding that no exception had been made in his case.
Kate was as mad as a hornet in a trombone; and having used up most of her picturesque phraseology on the clarification of his other inadequacies, she was now resorting to the violence of which she was so well-known a practitioner.
‘But Honey,’ said Doc, removing the remains of a giant economy size pot of face-cream from his previously immaculate lapels; ‘you know I’d ride through hell an’
back for you! It’s just that, on this occasion, I’d like for you to come with me. We’ll both enjoy it – it’ll be a break,’ he added, without much conviction.
‘You think so, do you?’ she enquired, reaching for a handsome bronze statuette of the Venus de Milo with an egg-timer in its stomach, which had been an admired appurtenance of her business premises in Acapulco. ‘Take that!’
‘Now Kate, what