Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [43]
While Destiny and such, for their part, contrived to arrange that as the ill-assorted pair left town, Steven and Johnny Ringo rode into it from the opposite direction.
Destiny is uncommonly good at things like that.
‘What makes you think,’ enquired Steven, ‘that they’ll be in this town? It doesn’t look the kind of place anyone would choose to visit.’
‘I don’t know, boy, but I surely do figure so. On account it’s the first bar-fall out o’ Tombstone, an’ Doc’ll be thirsty.’
‘All right then – so, if they’re here, how do we find them?’
‘The way it mostly happens,’ explained Ringo, ‘is, you take one side of the street, while I take the other. And then,’ he continued, ‘what J. Caesar would have done, is try every saloon.’
‘And if I find him first, how will I know him?’
‘You’ll know him, boy – you’ll know him! An’ if so be you do find him, don’t try nothin’ on your own. Holler fer me!’
‘I’ll be glad to,’ agreed Steven, setting off on a tour of the unsavoury tourist traps and leaving Johnny to tie down his holsters, check his firing pins, and generally follow the accepted guide-lines laid down for gunfighters, at such moments in their lives.
However, since we know that Holliday was no longer in residence, the whole scene might be said to lack dramatic tension; were it not for the fact that in the very first bar Ringo entered, Kate Elder, who had finished her shopping, was trying to earn a litle blameless pin-money at the Faro table.
And that encounter led to tension enough for anybody in their right mind.
‘Whoops!’ said Kate, on meeting Ringo’s ice-cold eyes.
‘Now what kind of a remark is that?’ he enquired. ‘Ain’t you pleased to see me?’
‘When am I never?’ she assured him. ‘Jest a mite unexpected, that’s all. Well now, Johnny, it’s been nice meetin’ you again, but I really must be leavin’ now, on account of shoppin’ an’ such... Woman’s work,’ she improvised, ‘is never done!’
‘So don’t do it,’ he advised. ‘You got no call to go no place, as I can see. ’Less, of course, you plan to travel feet first?’
‘Why, Johnny, you wouldn’t gun down no frail female, would you?’
‘Generally speakin’, it’s no trouble. But cain’t say as I recollect your bein’ frail, Kate. More like a bob-cat in a hen-coop, as I remember,’ he said, his mind drifting back to their previous close relationship. ‘But right now, that don’t make no never mind. Reason I’ve come a-callin’ is so’s I can offer you my congratulations on your forthcoming nuptials.’
‘Oh, those?’ She dismissed whatever they were, with an airy wave. ‘Most folks has ’em.’
‘Which are indeed widely spoken of,’ he continued. ‘So what I would also like to do at this time is offer those same good wishes to the degenerate bridegroom.’
‘Oh, him? I’d let it ride, if I was you, Johnny – he wouldn’t thank you.’
‘Reckon I’ll chance that, after I’ve come all this way, so specific. Take me to him!’
And since his sensitive fingers were, she noticed, playing a devil’s tattoo on both gun-butts, our home-spun Delilah led him at once to the one-night love-nest. There she found Dodo’s note and reacted to it like a powder-keg to a fast fuse.
‘Why, the innocent-lookin’ little prairie-flower!’ she spat – or words to that effect. ‘She an’ Doc has cleared out to New Mexico!’
No fool, Miss Dodo Dupont.
‘Mean to say,’ asked Ringo, anxious to get everything straight, ‘he’s jilted you in favour of Regret’s bespoken?’
‘Looks that way,’ she sighed. ‘Ain’t life a livin’, breathin’ cactus in the cushion?’
He considered the judgement, and found it hasty.
‘Don’t know about that,’ he comforted her. ‘Look at it this way, instead: here was I, about to kiss you an’ Doc off to Hades – him first, an’ then you!’ he elaborated. ‘But now, here we both are – two young people with a life of broken promises stretchin’ before us to wherever...
‘Now, New Mexico’s a ways; so I reckon Doc’ll jest have to wait patient till I can attend to his requirements at some future date. Because, lookin’ on the bright side now, I have been offered gainful employment