The Doctor And The Rough Rider Part 15

"He's a lot more than that," said Wiggins.

"Oh?"

"I had lunch with him at the Grand. He's a bird expert-"

"Ornithologist," Holliday corrected him.

"And a taxidermist, and an author, and a boxer, and no end of things. Did you know that he's writing a series of books on the taming of the West? I imagine you'll be one of the stars."

"Or one of the villains."

"Don't be silly, Doc. He's your friend."

"He's everyone's friend. That's what politicians do and are."

"Then he's not destined to be much of a politician," said Wiggins. "I think there are a lot of things that young man wouldn't do to get elected, and lying is one of them."

Holliday suddenly stared at the ceiling. "Let's see if he lives long enough to run for office again."

"Is someone after him?" asked Wiggins.

"You never know."

"What are you staring at, Doc?"

"There's a bat up there."

"So what? There are bats in all the rafters in town."

"Yeah," said Holliday, "but this one's staring at me, and it's broad daylight."

"That is unusual, isn't it?" said Wiggins.

Holliday stood up. "Henry, I have to leave. The bottle's yours."

"Are you okay, Doc?" asked Wiggins.

"So far," replied Holliday, and then added: "But it's early yet."

He knew he wouldn't be approached in the street, so he walked around the building and went into the alley behind it. The bat fluttered out through a door a moment later, and a few seconds after that Holliday was staring into Geronimo's eyes.

"He walks, he breathes," said Geronimo.

"When does he get here?"

"He comes from the land of the Tsistsistas."

Holliday frowned. "The Tsistsistas?" he repeated.

"You call them the Cheyenne."

"It makes sense," said Holliday. "After all, you killed Hook Nose. When does he get here?"

"It takes him no time to get from there to here."

"He's here now?"

"He is between Tombstone and my southern lodge, waiting for Roosevelt or myself to ride out and challenge him."

"So instead you're sending the sacrificial lamb," said Holliday, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

"Remember: there is a reward."

"I hope I can collect it in h.e.l.l," said Holliday.

HOLLIDAY HATED HORSES. He thought he'd hated them all his life, back to when he was growing up in Georgia, and horses meant cavalry, and cavalry meant more Union soldiers. He wasn't sure about that, but he knew he'd hated them ever since he'd come out West and had to start riding them.

He knew Masterson loved horse racing, and went into rhapsodies over Hindoo and Aristides and some of the other equine champions, but he had no use for them, and only a grudging use for saddle horses. In his mind, horses were good for one thing: pulling wagons, surries, coaches, anything with four wheels.

So of course he was mounted on a bay gelding, heading out across the desert, an ugly, barren land that everyone he knew from Wyatt Earp to Theodore Roosevelt found beautiful.

"I hope to h.e.l.l you've pointed me in the right direction," he muttered, but there was no answer.

He pulled his canteen off the saddle horn where it had been hanging, opened it, and took a swig of whiskey. Not bad, he decided; maybe the barley that went into this had been fertilized by Hindoo. Probably not by John L. Sullivan, though he was such a drunk that you could never be entirely sure.

"Getting dark," he said. "Am I going to be able to see him?"

There was no answer.

"Thanks a lot," said Holliday.

He wished that he weren't riding alone, that he had someone he could count on riding shotgun for him. Wyatt would have been good at it.

Of course, the best man for the job would have been Johnny Ringo. Ringo was dead, to be sure, but that hadn't stopped the medicine men from reviving him and sending him out to kill Holliday and Edison almost three years ago. He was a drunkard with a foul temper, but even as a zombie he'd been one h.e.l.l of a killer-and more to the point, Holliday had actually enjoyed his company. They were the only two college-educated shootists in the West, and there was no one else in his chosen profession that he could discuss philosophy and the cla.s.sics with. They'd hit it off, and it wasn't bitterness or hatred that led them to their final confrontation. It was Fate. Not only had the other side enlisted his services, but both men craved compet.i.tion at the highest level, and that meant that under any circ.u.mstances they would eventually have faced each other in the street. Of course, he had an edge, the Buntline Special that Tom and Ned had created for him-but then Ringo had an edge too; after all, he was already dead.

He wished he'd stopped by Edison's and Buntline's connected houses and picked up something, anything, with which to face War Bonnet. But Geronimo had been adamant: this was where he would be at such-and-so a moment, and if Holliday wasn't there to meet him, he'd go into town, ripping it apart in his efforts to find Roosevelt and killing dozens of innocent people in the process.

Now, Holliday wasn't convinced that there were a dozen men in Tombstone who were innocent of anything, and he didn't really give a d.a.m.n if War Bonnet wiped them all out-well, except for Tom, Ned, and Roosevelt, and maybe that fawning Wiggins-but he'd consented to go, not out of any n.o.ble or heroic notions, but simply because he wanted to collect Geronimo's reward if he actually survived, and because a quick death didn't seem any worse to him than the slow, debilitating, painful one he was facing.

He estimated that he was five miles out of town, and three miles from anything or anyone remotely alive. He keep looking for hawks, eagles, wrens, prairie dogs, rabbits, anything that might be Geronimo or one of his braves keeping watch on him, but he saw absolutely nothing.

"It's mighty empty and more than a little foreboding out here," he muttered to his horse. "I'd sing if I knew how to, and if I didn't have to take any deep breaths."

The horse grunted, as if pleased to know that his rider was neither asleep nor dead.

Holliday kept scanning the horizon, looking for a sign of War Bonnet or anything else, but it remained barren and empty, and he realized that he probably wouldn't see or hear a magical creature's approach anyway.

He pulled the Derringer out of his lapel pocket, checked it for the third time since he'd ridden out from town, and replaced it. He drew his six-gun to make sure there were no obstructions-there had never been any, but he was a careful man-and slid it back into his holster. He knew that young guns practiced their draws all the time, as if fast were more important than accurate, or as if either meant more than cold, emotionless efficiency. He'd been outdrawn many times, and yet except for a minor wound at the O.K. Corral, he'd never been hit in any of his gunfights.

"I hope you're listening," he said aloud, "because I'm going to give it just ten more minutes, and then I'm turning around and heading back to town. He's got enough advantages already; there's no sense facing him in the dark."

There was no answer.

He looked down at the back of his horse's neck, which was obscured by a long black mane.

"I don't suppose it's you, is it?" he said.

The horse continued walking, and didn't reply.

And then, suddenly, the horse stopped, and Holliday could feel it tense beneath him, because standing there some fifty yards away from him was War Bonnet. Not Geronimo's wavy, semitranslucent apparition, but a real-well, surreal-flesh-and-blood creature, his hands afire, the blaze in his eyes matching them.

"You're bigger than he said," said Holliday, some of the tension actually leaving him now that he was finally confronting the huge Indian.

"What does Goyathlay know?" said War Bonnet contemptuously in a harsh, exceptionally deep voice. "When I finish with him and the one who hides his eyes behind gla.s.s, they will be less than the dust on the ground."

"That's what we have to talk about," said Holliday, trying to steady his mount.

"We know you, Holliday," said War Bonnet. "You are a dying drunkard. We have nothing to say to you."

"We?" repeated Holliday, frowning. "All I see is one big b.a.s.t.a.r.d who's going to jar the ground when he falls."

"We made this warrior," was the reply. "We can address you through him. He obeys our will."

"And just who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"We are the medicine men of all the a.s.sembled tribes except the Apache," replied War Bonnet expressionlessly. "We are Dull Knife of the Cheyenne, Spotted Elk of the Lakota, Cougar Slayer of the Arapaho, Tall Wolf of-"

"You're not going to bore me until sunrise with this, are you?" interrupted Holliday.

"No," came the reply, and now War Bonnet's face was animated again. "I am going to kill you."

"I and not we?" asked Holliday. "Make up your mind, or don't you have one?"

War Bonnet advanced, and Holliday drew his gun and fired three times, placing a bullet in each of the monstrous Indian's eyes and one in his forehead. They didn't bounce off, but instead seemed to be absorbed into his ma.s.sive head, doing no damage. War Bonnet roared his rage and continued approaching.

"Thanks for all your f.u.c.king help," muttered Holliday under his breath as he prepared to be torn limb from limb by the approaching behemoth.

"Your skin will shrivel and your bones will melt, Holliday," roared War Bonnet, reaching out to him. "You will live only a few seconds, but they will be the most agonizing seconds any man has ever suffered."

Holliday fired three more shots into War Bonnet's chest, then reached for the pistol in his lapel as the monster reached out a blazing hand for him.

Holliday tensed, and prepared to suffer exactly as War Bonnet had predicted, but instead the insubstantial blazing fingers pa.s.sed right through him.

"s.h.i.+t!" said Holliday. "They're not even warm!"

War Bonnet cursed, beat his chest like a bull gorilla, and tried once again to grab Holliday. He terrified the horse, who started bucking and squealing, forcing Holliday to hold on to the saddle horn with both hands, but the monster was completely unable to make physical contact with him.

Finally he backed off, glaring at Holliday, who used the opportunity to dismount before he was thrown off.

"Well, Fred, Joe, Tom and Johnny, and whoever else is in there, what now?" he said, starting to reload his gun as the horse calmed down.

War Bonnet wasn't done yet. He lifted his ma.s.sive foot high and brought it down on Holliday's head-and this time, instead of pa.s.sing through him, the foot bounced off, and Holliday could tell from his face that he was in pain.

"I take it all back," he whispered. "You were right."

War Bonnet spent the next five minutes alternately trying to burn, grab, hit, and kick Holliday, but to no avail. Then he spotted a ma.s.sive rock, weighing perhaps a thousand pounds, on the ground a few yards away. He walked over to it, lifted it with ease, held it aloft, and approached Holliday, who eyed him very nervously, since unlike War Bonnet himself, the rock was not magical and was solid and real.

But as War Bonnet drew closer, he began straining, the veins stood out on his neck, and his arms started trembling. Finally he could walk no farther but stopped and dropped the rock onto the ground, where it landed with an audible thud.

"Are you getting tired of this yet?" asked Holliday.

War Bonnet glared at him, and lifted the rock again. Once more it was apparent that he could barely hold it aloft, and Holliday fired two quick shots into him to see if his weakness had spread to his invulnerability, but they had no more effect than before. Then the huge Indian turned his back to Holliday, and Holliday could see that he was no longer straining. With a scream of rage, War Bonnet hurled the ma.s.sive rock some fifty yards away.

"Do not smile at me, Holliday!" roared War Bonnet, turning back to him.

"Oh, call me Doc, now that we're not going to be killing each other," said Holliday, still smiling.

"Your days are numbered," vowed War Bonnet.

"I've heard that before," said Holliday. "Usually it's come from men who could at least draw blood."

"It is true that I cannot kill you," said War Bonnet in his deep, thunderous voice. "I have been created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to kill the invader Roosevelt and the turncoat Goyathlay."

"I wish you the same luck with them that you had with me," said Holliday.

"It is true that I cannot kill you," repeated War Bonnet. "But there is one who can, and he shall be my surrogate."

"You know words like 'surrogate'?" said Holliday. "I'm impressed. Now why don't you shamble off to whatever h.e.l.l you came from and forget about all this?"

"How little you know," said War Bonnet. "You, Roosevelt, and Goyathlay are all doomed, corpses who do not yet know you are dead."

"Are you guys inside this clown going to send another ugly creature here to scare me to death?" asked Holliday.

Suddenly War Bonnet vanished. Holliday looked around, but knew that something that big couldn't hide on this barren, featureless landscape. He waited a moment, then walked to the side of his horse, pulled down his canteen, and had two quick swallows of whiskey.

And as quickly as he vanished, War Bonnet returned, standing exactly where he had been.

"Nice trick," said Holliday. "Did you run home to get some advice?"

"No, walking corpse. I went to the land you call Texas."

"Waste of time," said Holliday. "They don't scare any easier than I do."

"There is a jail there. After I reached an agreement with an inmate, I tore his cell apart and freed him."

Holliday stared at him, waiting for him to finish his story.

"There is a man who is even a greater killer than you," continued War Bonnet.