The Doctor And The Rough Rider Part 24

Holliday nodded. "The Epitaph has been tracking his progress for me." A grim smile. "There's no doubt who it is. Killed a man in a bar in Texas who thought it was funny to call him Hard-on." He paused. "Shot another man for not moving out of his way fast enough on a sidewalk in Lincoln County, New Mexico."

"You're kidding!"

"Check it out yourself. I'll be happy to show you."

"The man's a monster!" exclaimed Roosevelt.

"These days the man's a lawyer," said Holliday wryly. "Comes to pretty much the same thing."

"Well, we can make sure you don't have to face him alone," said Roosevelt. "I'll a.s.semble my Rough Riders; they'll surround and protect you as they did me."

"They protected you against a magical giant with supernatural powers," replied Holliday. "Hardin is one h.e.l.l of a shootist, but when all is said and done, that's all he is: a flesh-and-blood shootist."

"But why face him if you don't have to?"

"I've faced every man who ever came after me, Theodore. I faced Johnny Ringo a year after he'd been shot and killed. I've never asked anyone to fight my battles for me."

"What if you start coughing just when he's facing you?"

"Then I'll stop coughing permanently and the world will be none the worse off for it," answered Holliday. "If I were you, I'd worry about how to kill War Bonnet. After all, I don't plan to live long enough to be president."

Roosevelt offered a guilty smile. "It's just a fancy, a maybe someday kind of thing. I have a lot to accomplish first."

"Well, I've done all my accomplis.h.i.+ng. Either Hardin will put me in the grave now, or the sanitarium will plant me in a year or two. Like I said, worry about War Bonnet."

"I've been thinking about him all the way back," admitted Roosevelt. "And you know something, Doc?"

"What?"

"I'm convinced that he can be killed. There's a weakness there, but I'm missing it. I've gone over every one of his abilities in my mind, I've listed them all, I've examined them all, and it keeps eluding me. It's right there, so close I can almost touch it, but it keeps floating just out of my grasp." Roosevelt frowned. "I'm expressing myself badly. I really am a writer, you know."

"I've ordered your treatise on naval warfare," replied Holliday. "They say it's the definitive study. Should arrive in another couple of weeks."

"You really ordered it?" asked Roosevelt, clearly flattered.

"You really wrote it," was Holliday's answer.

"If it gets here before we leave, I'll inscribe it to you," Roosevelt promised.

"That's a thoughtful offer," said Holliday. "But we're either going to kill War Bonnet and Hardin or they're going to kill us before the book gets here, and I think you know it."

"I'm an optimist," said Roosevelt. "I think we'll both be here whether they arrive before the book or not."

"It'd be nice if you were right."

"If I can just see what I'm missing, I'll be right," answered Roosevelt.

"Have a drink," said Holliday, pus.h.i.+ng his bottle across the table. "Maybe it'll clarify your thinking."

Roosevelt hesitated a moment, then shook his head. "My thinking's fine," he replied. "It's my d.a.m.ned perceptions that are playing havoc with me. His weakness is staring me in the face, and I'm still not seeing it."

"I understand you've been quite a few months without a woman," said Holliday. "Maybe one of Ned's metal chippies will help you relax and clarify your thinking. Kate Elder sold out when she left town, but they're still working here for the new owner."

"No," said Roosevelt firmly.

"You sure?"

"We have different moral codes, Doc. I don't tell you how to live, and I expect no less from you."

"The subject is closed," said Holliday.

"Thank you."

"Well," said Holliday, pus.h.i.+ng his chair back from the table, "I think maybe I'll go try my luck at the poker tables." He grimaced. "I was planning to head back to Leadville after I introduced you to Geronimo, but if I'm going to face Hardin I might just as well do it where the air is thick enough to breathe."

He got to his feet, left a silver dollar on the table to pay for his dinner and his bottle, took the bottle with him, and walked out of the restaurant, past the front desk, and into the street, where he turned south and headed for the Oriental.

Roosevelt finished Masterson's steak, decided he was still hungry, ordered a small steak of his own, waited patiently for it to arrive, ate it, paid his bill, and went up to his room.

It was a hot night, and he opened the window. It almost surprised him that there was no bird waiting to fly in, become Geronimo or one of his warriors, and discuss yesterday's adventure.

He took off his coat and tie, unb.u.t.toned the top two b.u.t.tons on his s.h.i.+rt, stalked restlessly around the room for a few minutes, and finally sat down at the desk. He picked up a pen the hotel had supplied, dipped it in the desk's inkwell, and began writing on the hotel stationery he found in the drawer.

My Dearest Alice: I know it is insane to write to you, who have been dead all these months, but I need to organize my thoughts, and you were always the one who acted as the perfect sounding board for them.

I find myself in a situation that nothing in my previous experience could have prepared me for. I must face, and defeat, an enormous creature, some two stories high, heavily muscled, with arms that end in flames-arms and flames that were clearly meant to engulf his enemies. By which I mean, to engulf me, for he was created solely to kill me and the Apache shaman Geronimo. He is invulnerable to bullets. I suspect he is equally impervious to knives and arrows. I find it difficult to believe that water will have any effects on his flaming extremities, nor do I know how, in this extremely dry and primitive desert town, I could find a sufficient supply of water to douse them even if I am mistaken.

All logic says that I should forget about confronting him. I should cut and run back to the eastern side of the Mississippi River. I know he won't follow me there. He was created solely to stop Geronimo and myself from coming to an agreement.

Yet if I do not deal with Geronimo, the United States will be confined to the eastern side of the Mississippi, whereas I truly believe that it is our manifest destiny to reach the Pacific as a nation. So I cannot turn tail and run, comforting as the thought of it might be to me when I sit here alone in the dark and realize what I must face.

Goliath did not tower over David the way this monster towers over normal men. And yet David brought his monster down with a single stone, and I must find the equivalent of that stone to use against my monster.

I have one advantage that David lacked: I have the greatest inventor of our age, Thomas Alva Edison, on my side. He has partnered with the inventor, Ned Buntline, to try to find weaknesses in the Indians' magic. He has succeeded here and there, in bits and pieces. If he can succeed this one last time, can create for me the equivalent of David's stone, that is the very last thing he will have to do out here in the West, and he and I can both go back to leading our normal lives.

The frustrating thing, the thing that is driving me crazy, is that I know War Bonnet's weakness. I know how to go about killing him-and yet that knowledge is buried somewhere in the back of my mind. For two days I have been trying to think of it, and have been unable to. My friend, the notorious shootist Doc Holliday, suggested that a drink might loosen the doors of my mind, and I am so frustrated that I briefly considered it. Hopefully when I talk to Edison and Buntline tomorrow, they'll ask the right question, and all will become clear.

If not, I will soon be lying beside you.

Your Theodore ROOSEVELT WAS UP WITH THE SUN, AS USUAL. He went through his calisthenics, walked down to the restaurant, and ordered some scrambled eggs and coffee. He wasn't surprised to see that Holliday wasn't in attendance, and only mildly less surprised to note that Masterson also hadn't come down to breakfast.

He finished, left some coins on the table, and went for a brisk walk around the southern end of town. Finally he found himself in front of Buntline's house, walked around it until he was facing Edison's front door, and approached it.

"One moment, Theodore Roosevelt," said a mechanical voice. A light flashed near his eyes, and by the time he'd stopped seeing spots the door opened and Thomas Edison was standing in the doorway.

"I'm sorry, Theodore," he said. "I'm trying out a new security system. I'll have to adjust the flash on that camera." He paused. "Come on in. Can I offer you anything to drink?"

"Some coffee."

"Good! I happen to have a pot on. I'll get it while I summon Ned." He stared at Roosevelt. "I a.s.sume you do want to speak to both of us?"

"I do."

"I thought so," said Edison, buzzing for Buntline. "You've been hunting the monster, haven't you?"

Roosevelt nodded, "Observing him, anyway."

"Fascinating!" said Edison, pouring the coffee. "I want to hear all about it!"

Buntline, his ap.r.o.n covered with soot from his furnace, where he'd been forging his super-hardened bra.s.s, entered the building through the connecting pa.s.sageway. He greeted Roosevelt with a happy smile, and sat down on a shabby leather chair that had seen better days and decades.

"So, Theodore," said Edison, bringing him his coffee and then sitting down on a couch opposite him, "what can you tell us about War Bonnet?"

"Most especially," added Buntline, "what can you tell us that Doc didn't tell us?"

"Everything and nothing," said Roosevelt, frowning. "I'm sure if he's got a weakness, I've seen it-but I haven't recognized it. That's what I'm hoping you two can do." He took a sip of the coffee and made a face. "Hot."

"It's just off the stove."

"Anyway, I was right that the medicine men control him, because when he had to make a split-second choice between attacking me and protecting them, he chose to protect them."

"We've pretty much figured that out," said Buntline. "Were you able to kill any of them-Dull Knife or the others?"

Roosevelt shook his head. "We may have wounded one. I'm sure we didn't kill him. And once War Bonnet got between the Rough Riders and the medicine men, he absorbed everything they threw at them."

"The Rough Riders," said Buntline with a smile. "I love that name."

"It fits them," said Roosevelt.

"Get back to the encounter, Theodore," said Edison impatiently. "Tell us everything you remember."

"He was behind a small rise when we arrived. I guess he heard us riding up in a group; he couldn't have seen us. Anyway, he got to his feet and came right at me."

"Impervious to the bullets of your men?"

"I told them not to waste time shooting at him, since based on Doc's experience it wouldn't have done any good," said Roosevelt. "Instead, I directed them to charge the medicine men's hut."

Edison grinned. "I'll bet he set a world record getting back there."

Roosevelt nodded an affirmative. "He totally ignored me-he could have reached and killed me in another ten or twelve seconds-but he raced back to get between the Rough Riders and the hut where the medicine men were."

"What makes you think you wounded one of them?" asked Buntline. "Did War Bonnet suddenly become weaker, maybe even start bleeding a little?"

"Sherman McMaster, one of my men, took a blind shot through the wall of one of the huts and we all heard a scream from within. War Bonnet screamed, too. He clutched his shoulder, and moved to protect the hut with his body. He was still absorbing all the bullets, so he didn't seem to be weakened at all...but from his actions, we felt sure that we'd chosen the right hut, and from the scream it seems safe to a.s.sume that we wounded something."

"All right," said Edison. "Once he got there, you couldn't do the inhabitants of the hut any more harm."

"Not much more," qualified Roosevelt.

"So at some point either your men retreated or War Bonnet a.s.sumed the medicine men were safe-"

"Or was told they were safe," interjected Buntline.

Edison nodded. "Or was told they were safe." He paused, frowning. "And then he went after you?"

Roosevelt shook his head. "It didn't happen quite that way. It was when other warriors-normal warriors, not medicine men and not monsters-joined the battle that my Rough Riders realized the medicine men were temporarily safe, and that meant I was exposed. So they raced back to me, dismounted, and surrounded me before War Bonnet could reach me. They knew from Doc's account, and their own battle just seconds ago, that he couldn't hurt them, couldn't even touch them with those fiery hands, so they had me kneel down and War Bonnet, try as he could, couldn't reach through or around them to get to me."

"Fascinating!" said Buntline. "But of course you couldn't stay like that all day. What changed?"

"I instructed Luke Sloan, one of my men, to mount up while the other five tightened the circle around me, and to ride, firing his guns, toward the medicine men's hut. War Bonnet immediately raced back to protect them, we mounted up and rode off, and Luke caught up with us later."

"And War Bonnet?" asked Buntline.

"Never saw him again," answered Roosevelt. He leaned back and finished his coffee. "And that's the whole story."

Edison rubbed his chin with his right hand. "Interesting," he said.

"Have you spotted something?" asked Roosevelt.

"Only the obvious, so far."

"Nothing's obvious to me," said Roosevelt. "What have you got?"

"He's not the brightest Indian you ever came across," said Edison. "Consider: he's standing almost within arm's reach of you. One of your men rides back toward the medicine men, and he promptly ignores you and races back, and by the time he's gotten there and scared Sloan away-I a.s.sume that's all he could do, that he couldn't actually harm or even touch your man-you've mounted up and gone. Right?"

"Right."

"Well, there you have it," said Edison.

Roosevelt frowned. "Maybe you have it. I don't."

"Think about it, Theodore. Your six men retreated, not because War Bonnet was decimating or even hurting them, but because other warriors showed up and drove them off. And suddenly he leaves you because one man is riding back to the very spot those warriors are stationed? He left the man he was created to kill to protect some medicine men who were in no need of his protection."

"d.a.m.n!" exclaimed Roosevelt. "I never thought of that."

"Don't let it bother you," replied Edison. "It's probably of little or no use to us. After all, we want to kill him. We already know that he's stupid."

"And nothing you shot at him-guns, rifles, nothing-got any reaction?" asked Buntline.

"Nothing," Roosevelt affirmed.

Edison rose and walked to the kitchen. "This sounds like a two-pot problem," he said, returning with the pot and refilling their coffee cups. "But we won't quit thinking and planning until we've got a solution."

"Is there a solution?"

"If I can electronically light the whole of Tombstone and find a way to power Ned's horseless stagecoaches, I promise you I can find a way to kill a monster who can only appear for a few minutes at a time and can only make physical contact with two men in all the world," said Edison. "Now let's go over what happened again."

And so they did, and then a third time, and then a fourth.