Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [9]
‘Doc, will you listen?’
‘Why, I jest finished tellin’ you, Kate – I don’t rightly see no alternative.’
‘Damn your hide, I mean now! Doc, I thought you promised me as you was goin’ to give up gun-play? You said you was goin’ to hang up your two Colt specials, your Derringer, your knife, and your Sharpe’s Buffalo rifle over the whisky-still, right next to Ma’s likeness!’
‘Now that there truly is an offensive weapon, sure
‘nough! But I aim to keep my word, Kate. Hereon in, my lightnin’ fingers are gonna be applied to molars, canines, and the like. I’m all through with blood and pain.’
‘Is that so? In that case, Doc, you’d better clear out of Tombstone right now!’
Understandably, he evidenced surprise, not unmixed with irritation.
‘But, tarnation blazes, I only just got here! What ails you, Kate? You fixin’ to renage on our lovin’ agreement?
You been rollin’ them oglin’ eyes at some other man? You met someone else already?’
‘I met four of ’em, if you want to know. An’ they’re alayin’ for you right now back in the bar!’
‘The hell you say! Who are these gentlemen? Anyone of my acquaintance?’
‘Three of ’em’s the Clanton brothers.’
He sighed deeply. ‘Now ain’t it always the same? Won’t that family never learn? Seems like every varmint I kill’s got a passel of brothers waiting to join him! So who’s the fourth, may I ask?’
‘Gun-slinger name of Seth Harper. He’s ugly, Doc – he’s real ugly.’ She considered this statement a while, then amended it as follows: ‘Doc, he’s awful ugly!’
‘Well, I ain’t plannin’ to shack up with him, Kate.
Snake-eyes Harper? Why, from what I hear, he’s nothin’
but a side-winding, backshooting, natural son of a three-toed tree-toad! Guess that about covers it. Now, if there’s one thing makes me real angry, it’s that class of animal steppin’ out of its league! Reckon I’ll have me a little talk with him to that effect.’
‘You’re all through bein’ angry, Doc. An’ if you won’t leave town, you gotta promise me you’ll stay out of the Last Chance till they blow over. Won’t take long at that, the way they’re drinkin’...’
‘Now, that don’t appeal, Kate, that don’t come at all natural. Comes the day I can’t step into a saloon for a thimble of dry sherry, it’ll be my liver stops me – not a bunch of boozed-up hoodlums!’
‘I’ll stop you, Holliday, if I have to,’ said a third, gravel-filtered voice, joining the discussion uninvited.
Fortunately, Doc recognised it, and put his Derringer back where it belonged. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘the big man! I was wondering when you’d show up, Masterson.’
‘Soon as I heard you was in town,’ croaked Bat, ‘I figured it was time to tell you to get the hell out of it.’
‘Now, why is everyone so goddam friendly so sudden? I tell you Sheriff, I’m a respectable tradesman now – a professional practitioner of the orthodontic art. I got no quarrel with anybody, have I, Kate?’
‘Not that I’ve heard,’ simpered Goody-Two-Boots, primly.
‘Well then, keep out of trouble for one; jest stay in your hygienic, sweat-shop surgery, an’ we’ll get along fine.’
‘Why, Bat, I was just about to enter same. And I surely do look forward to the pleasure of entertainin’ you in my sparklin’ new chair real soon. Don’t leave it too long, you hear? There’s a couple of things about your mouth I don’t like the look of; never have done, come to that. Will you take my arm, Miss Catherine, or shall I have someone carry you over the threshold?’
And the engaged couple entered the marital waiting-room; leaving Bat Masterson to wonder what Holliday had meant about his mouth. What didn’t he like about it?
Surely not his moustache, of which he was proud. As would have been a walrus.
He resolved to take the matter up with the dentist at their next meeting; and fingering the treasured growth protectively, he squelched back to his office.
Where he found company.
6
Identity Parade
The gaunt Earp had finally established our three jazzily