Doc Page 8

  Just as she and Doc reached the Green Front’s door, he stopped short and whistled his admiration for a fine dapple-gray mare tied to a rail out front. “That might be the prettiest head God ever put on a horse,” Doc remarked to a pair of troopers who lounged nearby, smoking and complaining.

  Kate turned back and frowned. Doc was broad-minded, but he usually drew the line at uniformed Yankees. These boys were too young to have been in the war. Maybe that made it possible not to hate them on sight.

  “Take a look, darlin’,” he said, gesturing with his cigarette. “Unless I miss my guess, she is one of Anthony Keene Richard’s fillies.”

  “Naw,” a stringy corporal told him. “She’s Captain Grier’s horse.”

  “I stand corrected,” Doc said with a slight but courteous bow. “I should have said that Captain Grier’s mare carries the bloodlines of Mr. Richard’s horses. One must choose one’s words carefully among scholarly Yankees.”

  Kate rose on her toes and breathed, “Turner,” into his ear.

  Ignoring her, Doc asked, “Now, why aren’t you two gentlemen enjoyin’ the city’s hospitality this evenin’?”

  “Goddam barn burned down,” the corporal told him. “So we’re guarding this goddam horse all night.”

  “All night, or until the goddam captain goes bust,” a private added, lifting a blunt chin toward the Green Front.

  “The captain would not be Elijah Grier, would he?” Doc asked.

  The soldier nodded. “That’s him.”

  “Well, now …” Doc drew on the cigarette and coughed a little: dry and shallow. “It is an unexpected treat to see such a mare right here in Dodge. My understandin’ was that all Mr. Richard’s breedin’ stock was lost durin’ Mr. Lincoln’s war.”

  Stolen, he meant.

  “Horses bore me,” Kate said with a calculated sullenness, tugging at his elbow.

  “Can’t have that, now, can we?” Doc told the troopers. “If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen?”

  Doc turned and held the saloon door open for her. Stepping inside, she smiled up at him, pleased to demonstrate her own acumen. The Saratoga was more plush and the Long Branch was much bigger, but the Green Front clientele was more serious about both drinking and gambling. There was a piano, badly tuned and poorly played, but the predominant sounds were the slide and slap of pasteboard cards, the clatter and chink of chips and coins, the clicking of a roulette wheel. Around the saloon, the low male mutter of conversation was punctuated by crisp professional calls.

  “Are you all down, gentlemen?”

  “Eight to one on the colors.”

  “Keno!”

  Around the room, customers and bar girls alike paused to take note when Doc Holliday and his woman arrived, for they made a handsome couple in silver gray and pale shimmering pink. Noticing the hush, Bat Masterson rose from his table at the back and approached with a friendly smile. He spent most nights at the Green Front, taking a percentage of the house for making sure the rougher element in town didn’t smash the place up. It was his custom to greet newcomers to the saloon as though he owned the place, and then say, “A word to the wise” about not starting any trouble.

  “Evening, Kate. Nice to see you again, Doc,” Bat began, but before he could say more, the dentist’s admiring gaze rendered him mute.

  “Why, Sheriff Masterson!” Doc said. “I never before noticed how intensely blue your eyes are. That waistcoat sets them off a treat! You should wear the color more often, sir.”

  Kate had both hands around Doc’s arm and tightened them a little, but kept her face carefully composed. The sheriff of Ford County was built like a chunk of wood: short, solid, cylindrical. That evening, Bat’s burly body was resplendent in a lavender suit and a pale yellow shirt. A vest of midnight blue and gold brocade set off his silvery pistols.

  “Vestis virum reddit,” she observed.

  “Clothes make the man,” Doc told Bat. “Marcus Fabius Quintilianus. Isn’t she a daisy?” Eyes on Kate’s, Doc brought one of her small hands to his lips, then seemed to remember that Bat was still standing there. “I apologize, Sheriff. You were about to say something?”

  “Welcome to the Green Front,” Bat said tightly. “First drink’s on the house. I’ll be at the back table if you need anything.”

  If you start anything, he meant.

  Kate almost laughed. She hadn’t planned on that little joust, but it didn’t surprise her either. Doc could be patronizing and snide, and cocky little bastards brought out the worst in him. As for Bat … Well, sure as henna hates a natural red, Bat Masterson would always think the worst of Doc Holliday. Bat told stories; Doc was a wit. Bat was false; Doc was wily. Bat was ambitious, but Doc had a sense of his own superiority so deep in him, he didn’t even know it existed. Most galling of all, both men had physical limitations they worked hard to conceal, and neither liked being reminded of that.

  Vanitas partita, vanitas aperta, Kate thought. Vanity shared is vanity exposed.

  Or, in more practical terms, one redhead to a whorehouse.

  Doc ordered a couple of shots and handed one to Kate, who set off on her own toward Turner’s table, where she would watch the action until he himself could join the game. He trusted Kate’s judgment in these matters and felt no need to second-guess her. In the meantime, sipping at his bourbon, he went looking for the Arabian mare’s owner.

  There were several cavalry officers in attendance, but Captain Grier was easy to pick out. Yes, he thought. The same man … Older, naturally. In his early twenties when he was stationed in Atlanta during the occupation. Somewhere around thirty-five now. Career officer, but still only a captain. What went wrong? Tailored uniform, some shine on the cuffs. Expensive boots, heels worn down. Grier played scared, looking at his cards too often.

  The pot was upwards of a grand and a half, with three players still in: Grier, the storekeeper Bob Wright, and Big George Hoover, the man who wholesaled liquor and cigars to all of Dodge City. As befitted the husband of an ardent Prohibitionist, Big George did no drinking—in public, at least. That made him circumspect. He played sober. That made him formidable. And as homely and artless as he appeared, Bob Wright barely glanced at his own cards, paying more attention to what was on the table.

  “That is a fine-lookin’ horse you have outside, sir,” Doc remarked, to see how Grier would take an interruption.

  “Yeah,” one of the others at Grier’s table said, “and if he keeps betting her, one of these days he’ll have to pay off.”

  “But not this evening,” Grier said. “Full house, kings over jacks.”

  Big George groaned good-naturedly. Bob Wright smiled, ever so slightly, eyes satisfied. No question. He knew he was going to lose that hand, but … It was tuition! Bob didn’t mind paying it, either, for he had just learned precisely how much money Grier had, and he knew now how the captain reacted, going that close to the edge.

  Which made Bob Wright a very interesting man.

  “Peach of a hand,” Doc remarked as Grier took the pot. “Your mare is Baghdad stock, is she not? Crockett’s Arabian and May Queen, is my guess.”

  Grier looked up. “That’s her line, all right. By Pasha, out of April Princess. You have a good eye, Mr.—?”

  “Dr. John Holliday,” he said, watching Grier’s eyes. There was no flicker of recognition. “I trust you enjoyed your stay in Georgia?”

  Grier looked puzzled. “Have we met, sir?”

  “No, though you may recall an uncle of mine by the same name.”

  “Goddammit, Grier, you gonna talk or play?”

  Doc bowed slightly, hand on his heart. “My apologies, gentlemen. I will let y’all get on with your game,” he said, but he stayed to watch a while longer. Grier’s tells were obvious. He tended to lean forward slightly when he was bluffing, and often sat back when he had the goods. Big George was more difficult to read, but one thing was certain. The bar girls didn’t like him. They got a percentage of every drink they sold, and there was no profit in a custo
mer who didn’t drink. And Bob Wright was a puzzle. If you watched carefully, you’d swear he was throwing money in Grier’s direction—betting when Grier had a good hand, folding a little late.

  Across the room, Kate beckoned. Doc strolled to her side.

  “Dealer’s a Chicago meatpacker,” she told him, voice low and intimate. “On the dealer’s right: Estes Turner. From Charleston, touchy about the war. Owns a ranch in Texas now. To his right, a banker from Topeka. Then two more cattlemen. Both flush. Banker’ll drop out in a hand or two.”

  “Thank you, darlin’. Find out what the girls have to say about George Hoover. And what is Eli Grier to Bob Wright?”

  It was easy enough to put Grier out of his mind. Ignoring the piano was harder. He studied the action at Turner’s table, waiting for the banker to go all in and lose. It wouldn’t take long. Five-card stud is a fast game, and there was a $20 ante. The meatpacker was almost sober and very good. The two cattlemen were dulled by drink. Turner was loud, and reckless.

  When the banker left the game, Doc stepped up. “Gentlemen,” he inquired, “may I join you?”

  Kate returned to the table, sitting behind Doc so nobody could accuse her of signaling an opponent’s cards to him. Her job was to roll cigarettes and keep his shot glass filled with tea from the bar girls’ “bourbon” bottle, occasionally substituting the real thing if he started to cough.

  For a couple of hours, Doc stayed small, playing quietly, folding a good hand now and then, to see how Turner would react. With every win, the man sat easier, talked more, and had another drink. Money was tossed into the center of the table with an insouciant flip of the wrist—cito acquiritur, cito perit—but it was a carelessness as yet untested by any significant loss. Turner was drunk on winning. He was drunk, period.

  In the fourth hour of play, one of the cattlemen dropped out, leaving nearly all his money in front of the meatpacker, Doc, and Turner.

  Doc began to work his man. It was nothing flashy, just playing hands he’d have quit earlier. He took three big pots in a row, betting heavily. Then, when he had Turner on his back foot, Doc let him win with a sudden fold. Kate held her face still, but it was hard not to smile. Turner couldn’t make out what was going on: suspicious when he lost, bewildered when he won.

  “Goddammit, Holliday,” Turner complained. “You don’t make any sense at all!”

  “It is wrong to have a ruthless, iron heart,” Doc recited, squinting through smoke at his cards. “Even the gods can bend and change … Your five hundred. A thousand more.”

  A crowd began to gather. Side bets were being made. Doc took the pot and turned the talk to war. Tinder for Turner’s spark. A few hands later, he drew the spade he needed and gave a sign to Kate, who left to get Bat Masterson.

  This was when things could go all wrong. After what happened in Denison, Doc wanted a witness with a badge. “There’s trouble at Doc’s table,” Kate would tell Bat, knowing that there would be soon and trusting that Bat would leave his own game, for she’d been priming him for weeks with tales of Doc’s bad temper and readiness to attack.

  “Why, ten minutes after I got off the train in Philadelphia, I knew why we had lost,” Doc was saying in his laziest drawl. “The North had iron mines. Foundries. Shipyards. Munitions factories, mills … Your grand and another.”

  The meatpacker and the cattleman folded. It was just him and Turner now.

  “The South?” he continued. “We knew how to produce two things, my friend. Cotton and aristocrats. Only thing left is the cotton, and the weevils are gettin’ half of that. What’ve you got?”

  Turner had a king-high straight. When Doc caught sight of Kate and Bat, he laid out his flush and took the pot, letting the sweep of his arm go a little wide, as though drink had made him sloppy.

  “The cause was lost,” he said, pulling the money in, “before you ignorant goddam Carolina crackers fired the first shot at Sumter.”

  For years afterward, Bat Masterson would tell people about that night.

  “I arrived too late to hear exactly what Doc said to set the fracas off, but there was no question about what happened next. Turner hollered that Doc was a goddam liar and reached for his gun.”

  Along with everyone else in the saloon, the South Carolinian went motionless a heartbeat later, paralyzed by the sight of a short-barreled, nickel-plated Colt .38 leveled at his chest.

  “Think about how much practice a move like that takes! Hours and hours,” Bat would say. “I never saw a hand quicker than Holliday’s. And I’ll tell you something else,” he would continue. “A serious gunman was always a little deaf in one ear—pistol practice, you follow? Doc always turned his right ear toward you when you talked. He was left-handed, y’see?”

  “I step aside to no man in my love for the Southland,” Doc said softly in the sudden silence, “but I speak the truth. You will do well to apologize for suggestin’ differently, sir.”

  “Doc’s voice never rose much above a whisper,” Bat would tell people. “Course, his lungs were so bad, I doubt he could’ve shouted if he wanted to, but that man could put a by-God whiplash into his words.”

  “Say it, you white trash chickenshit sonofabitch. John Holliday speaks the truth, or I am a lyin’, Yankee-lovin’ yellow dog.”

  Eyes wide, Turner swallowed hard. “John Holliday speaks the truth.”

  Doc waited.

  “Anyone says different is a yellow dog,” Turner finished.

  The gun was holstered as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I accept your apology, sir,” Doc said graciously. He rose to address the room. “And I offer my own for the unpleasantness, gentlemen.”

  Nobody moved, not even Turner, who was white beneath his drunken flush. Doc and Kate were heard to speak briefly in a foreign language. Doc ambled out into the night, leaning on his cane. Kate swept their winnings into her carpetbag. Turner looked down. He still had some money left and he wasn’t dead. He shook his head and started to laugh: half nerves, half relief.

  “No harm done,” Bat said with a shrug. Holliday was all talk, he decided, though he would not have said so aloud.

  “Bartender!” Kate called, holding up a fan of cash and tossing it into the air. “Doc says the drinks are on him!”

  The tension broke and there was a cheer as Kate sailed like royalty through the crowd. She stopped at the bar before she left, dropping five dollars on the polished walnut.

  “Bourbon. A bottle,” she ordered. “The good stuff, too, not that piss you sell cowboys.”

  There was one last stop, this time at the piano. It was foolish, but Doc had insisted. Kate pulled a gold piece from the carpetbag and offered it. When the startled player reached for the coin, she whipped it away, holding it just beyond his grasp. “Doc says bring somebody in from St. Louis and get this goddam piano tuned. Savvy?”

  The piano player nodded. He’ll be gone on the morning train, she thought, but she handed him Doc’s money.

  She found Doc out behind Dodge House. To anyone else, he would have looked a picture of nonchalance, leaning against the clapboards.

  “Bravo,” she said when she was close. “They won’t forget that, Doc!”

  He was rolling a cigarette in the starlight, or trying to. Kate took the makings from him and tapped the tobacco into line.

  “We tripled the stake,” she told him, “and the story’ll be all over town by morning. You wait and see. Nobody’s gonna bother you from now on.”

  She licked the edge of the paper cylinder, lit the cigarette for him, placed it between his lips. There was the usual little choking cough on the first puff. Nothing to worry about. It was the cheap tobacco they’d been reduced to lately. She’d stop by George Hoover’s shop tomorrow. If he didn’t have any decent North Carolina leaf in stock, she’d order some, special. They had plenty of cash now.

  “Let’s go to the Comique,” she suggested in French, pronouncing the theater’s name properly, not the way the locals did. Commie-Q, they called it. Ignorant
louts. “We can catch Eddie Foy’s last show.”

  He shook his head and went on smoking. For a time, they stood together silently, listening to the night sounds. Clanging pianos. Accordions and fiddles. Inebriated shouts of laughter. The hollow clatter of horns in a cattle pen south of the tracks.

  Kate took the cigarette back, pulled the last long drag on it, and flicked the butt into the dirt.

  Doc was a tall man. She liked that about him. She liked the feel of stretching up to put her hand on the back of his neck, bringing his face toward hers—pulling him down to her level. She kissed him on the mouth, then stood on tiptoe to bring her lips closer to his ear.

  “Come to my bed,” she said in English, the language of the brothels. “I can make you forget all those bastards.”

  And that little bitch back home, she thought.

  “Come to my bed,” she said, voice low and harsh and foreign, “and I will fuck you blind.”

  Later, after, he lay beside her, hands linked behind his head. He’d hardly said a word since they left the Green Front, but Kate was used to that. When Doc wasn’t talking a streak, he dummied up entirely.

  She got out of bed and poured them each another drink. “Which reminds me!” she said. “He won’t give the girls his empties.”

  Doc looked at her, blank.

  “George Hoover?” she reminded him. “Cheap sonofabitch makes the bar girls buy the empty whiskey bottles for their tea. And they hate his wife—reformed hooker.”

  “Grier?” Doc asked.

  “Nobody knows.” Kate smiled. “But trust me: I’ll find out.”

  Bad Beat

  The former prince and present priest Alexander Anton Josef Maria Graf von Angensperg had been warned about Johnnie Sanders. “Don’t get your hopes up,” Father John Schoenmakers told him. “These children will break your heart.”

  Twenty years on the Osage reservation had taught Father Schoenmakers to temper his expectations. So many obstacles had hindered the spiritual and educational progress of the Indians. The scarcity of Jesuit missionaries and the miserable conditions under which they worked. The violence and dislocation of “Bleeding Kansas,” and of the civil war that followed. The American government’s policy of deliberate neglect. The rapacity and corruption of Indian agents. The fear and intransigence of the Indians themselves.