Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [29]
‘Oh, he’s a real gentleman, ain’t he, Sugar?’ she appealed to Dodo, now resorting to tears – which, she had been told, could often be effective at such times...
She had been misinformed. The effect was similar to that of a hot-spring erupting in a mud-hole; and Holliday, not wishing her to make a filthy habit of the manoeuvre, said as much.
As for Dodo, she was, for once, uncertain as to what to say. If this was the widely advertised Love, she thought, she would be quite content to leave it to the older generation for the foreseeable... Besides, she had no wish to intrude on such a private moment; and so, being a sensible girl, she changed the subject, before it became exhausted.
‘Oh, look,’ she said, ‘they’re lighting a bonfire in the street! Isn’t that pretty?’
It may have been – but it was also Holliday’s shop; and he registered the fact with an astonished and indignant snarl.
‘By God, they’ve got my chair!’ he exclaimed and leapt through the door, fire-arms springing from every holster and ticket-pocket en route.
Such of you as had been previously concerned by the lack of custom in the bar may have also added a footnote to the effect that it was about damn time we had a little action round here. After all, it’s a Western, ain’t it? Well, here it is at last, friends; and don’t blame me if it’s a bit on the bloody side!
You will possibly remember that, for reasons of his own, our hired gun-tuner, Seth Harper by name, had elected to remain in the saloon, rather than join the ensuing whoopee with the maddened mob outside. You do? Good.
Well, then – he was now quietly occupied in draining the sludge-like sediment from the greasy glasses left on the bar by his friends and colleagues; at the moment when inspiration had struck them, as with a branding-iron.
Not a lot in it for him, of course; but ‘waste not want not’ had ever been his monosyllabic watch-words – and why not, I ask you? A man got precious few perquisites at his end of the business, the golden rewards of effort going largely to his employers.
So he was thus engaged when Holliday hit the stairs like a dry-season twister, and began his meteoric descent of same. All still might have been well, and they could have passed like ships in a bottle, with no harm done; had not Dodo, who had been watching the ebb and flow of events in Main Street from her bedroom window, chosen that very moment to holler after the retreating dentist, words to this effect: ‘Doc, they’ve got my friend Steven out there!
Oh, please, please, save him from the many-headed monster! Please, Doc!’
Well, that was the gist of it, anyway; but the point to note is that she not only said ‘Doc’ but that she said it twice!
The word sank into Seth’s unpractised mind, like a gleam of truth in a naughty world, as the saying is. And he levered himself away from the bar, into the very path of the cyclone. Of course, he’d been drinking heavily for some years, else he’d’ve never; but still, that’s what lack of temperance’ll do for you sometimes. One moment, you’re on top of the cock-eyed world – and the next, you’re telling the muscle-man in the corner that if he looks at you sideways again, you’ll knock his head off! That’s the way it goes, in my experience.
And that’s how it went with Seth. ‘Back up there, friend!’ he said. ‘Wait jest one little minute, will you?’
Strangely perhaps, Holliday obliged. Oh, he recognised Seth, all right, but he fancied he was secure in his own anonymity; and besides, he was, as we have seen at all times, a gentleman; and it was his impression that the gun-man was perhaps in need of a match, or some such. He therefore raised a brow enquiringly, while glancing at his fob-watch.