Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [36]
demurred Wyatt, modestly. Over the years, he had grown used to accusations of police provocation, and had learnt to pay them no never mind. ‘Maybe you don’t realise how close that was out there? For what we did not receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’
‘Well, of course we are,’ agreed the Doctor, ‘but surely there are other ways of doing these things?’
Wyatt considered the question. ‘’Spose I could’ve shot him – but seein’ I got no definite instructions to that effect from On High, I saw fit to let the transgressor have the benefit of Jehovah’s everlastin’ mercy...’
They looked at this evidence of Big J’s clemency, and decided to let the matter drop. After all, the Lord had done it now, and there it was...
Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘I fear that my friend and I will not be present to witness the outcome of this unfortunate affair. As soon as we have collected Dodo from the hotel, we must be on our way.’
‘Well, Hallelujah!’ said Wyatt. ‘Maybe once you’re gone, the town’ll settle down some.’
And so, with mutual expressions of goodwill and relief, they parted – but only for the time being...
Because little did they know that an hour previous to this valedictory chat, a stranger had clinked and jingled his menacing way into the Last Chance Saloon where he had taken up the position at the bar so recently occupied by the late Seth Harper.
And you could say he filled it better, at that; on account of this weren’t no ordinary two-bit, snake-eyed, backshooting delinquent – no, sir! Not by a vulture’s gut, it weren’t!
By one of those coincidences without which even the best fiction would be unreadable, and even a true story such as this, unconvincing, what we have here is the cool and deadly, calm and imperturbable, et cetera, high-class, professional gun-slinger, Johnny Ringo; before whom strong men would have quailed, if he’d ever given them a moment to get on with it.
A killer of the old school, in fact.
Yes, but hold on there – there weren’t no malice about it
– or not a lot, anyway. A business occupation, it was; and not just an unpleasant hobby. The way he looked at it, he was kind of working his way through college: because the one thing he’d always envied Doc Holliday – whom, in all other respects, he disliked – was his education. But, whereas Doc, as we know, was a medical man, Ringo himself had preferred to opt for the Classics, on account he considered them to be a mite more genteel. And to this end, it was his invariable habit to devote some percentage of his blood money to the purchase of such texts in the dead languages as were considered to be required reading by the folks who live on Nob Hill.
At the moment he was into Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and he considered this well-reviewed, ten-volume, high-tone work to be a lulu, in every respect: action, human interest, and class, in that order. O.K. – so it strained his saddle-bags some; but long as it lent his conversation that sparkle and polish so widely esteemed by the cognoscenti – what the hell? Because one day he might meet some of the latter; and then just watch his smoke! So, you will gather, that besides being one of the most efficient life-extinguishers a prospective mayor could wish to employ, he was a sure enough odd-ball. And, bearing in mind the traditional hostility between Science and the Arts, should he and Holliday ever meet face to face on their opposing paths to perdition, then any innocent by-standers in the vicinity had better watch out for themselves, that’s all!
Now, since he was dressed from head to foot in black; and since dawn, as we have already recorded, was still an hour off; and since Charlie had the shakes, and attributed the jingle of spurs to the tinkling of the ice in his breakfast
– for all these reasons, the bar-keep did not at once notice Ringo, looming in the nervous shadows as he was, like a promise of the wrath to come.
But at length the irritated tapping of a gun-butt in a bowl of the nuts you love to crunch awakened him to the fact that custom was in the offing;