Gunslinger: Chapter 5
elspethdixon and I finished chapter five of Gunslinger! Seventeen pages of conversation porn.
And Gunslinger has a fangirl of sorts! One whom we have helped corrupt into the wonderful world of slash!
My life is just that mush more complete.
Gunslinger: Dodge City
Part Five: The First Stone, part II.
When Virgil arrived for his shift at the jail Thursday morning, he found Jonah Dobson preaching across the street.
“Brothers, you must open your hearts and let Jesus in. Only He can show you the sins hidden within your souls.”
Virgil had been keeping a weather eye on Reverend Dobson ever since he’d first hit town. There was just something about the preacher that made him uneasy. He might be preaching temperance and morality, but his sermons were still stirring people up. And now he had gotten hooked up with the Conklins, and that wouldn’t be healthy for anyone.
Least of all the Dodge City peacekeeping commission, if they had to listen to him go on all day. And if he stayed where he was, they were going to; the man’s lungs were certainly powerful enough to let him be heard from inside the jail.
“Look around you!” Dobson invited his listeners passionately. Virgil chose not to look. He had seen more of Dodge than Dobson, in his five-day stay, had likely even glanced at.
“This town labors under the weight of its sin. Its very leaders profit from the vices of its citizens, tempting those whom they should guide into saloons and dance halls. Do not succumb to these temptations, for they are the snares laid by Satan to pull you away from God and into poverty and degradation. Even those meant to protect you associate with the darker elements of society; gamblers, saloonkeepers, and fallen women!” Dobson flung one arm dramatically towards the jail, and Virgil turned to see Wyatt and Holliday standing by the building’s door, pointedly ignoring the show.
Holliday snickered visibly and jabbed an elbow into Wyatt’s side, then tried unsuccessfully to duck out of the way as Wyatt reached out and ruffled his hair.
“Cut it out! Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”
“Yeah, sure you will.”
There were moments when Virgil suspected that he was the only Earp brother who had managed to mature beyond the age of fourteen. Wyatt might be all of twenty-eight, but occasionally, it was hard to tell.
Suppressing the urge to groan, he turned a deaf ear to the rest of Dobson’s pointed ranting and strode toward the jail, taking hold of Wyatt’s arm as he passed him and hauling him inside.
Although Virgil had not intended it, Holliday followed along as well, since he was apparently attached to Wyatt by an invisible string.
Clearly, none of Dodge’s peacekeepers had anything better to do this morning than sit around the jail, because although it was Morgan’s shift, Bat was sitting behind the desk, bowler hat tilted at a jaunty angle and feet propped up atop a crisp new stack of Dolores Conklin’s letters of complaint. Morgan was standing by the window, gazing out at the sky with a peculiar dreamy look on his face. He had obviously found some new girl to moon over.
Sometimes, Virgil felt very old.
“What are all of you doing here?” Bat asked.
“It’s my shift,” Virgil said. “What are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to come in until this afternoon.”
“It’s my jail,” Bat said. “I can come in whenever I want to. And why is Holliday in my jail? He serves no purpose. Unless you’ve arrested him. Have you arrested him?” He sat up a little straighter, looking hopeful.
“No,” Wyatt said. “He was heckling Dobson.” He grinned. “You’re in here hiding from him, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” Bat scoffed. “I never hide. And anyway, he was talking to Mrs. Conklin.”
“So, you were hiding from her. That’s a real improvement, Bat.”
“I don’t hide from her,” Bat insisted, though everyone in the room knew it was a lie.
Virgil had no notion why she intimidated Bat so much. She was bothersome, sure, but she was basically just a woman with no children who didn’t have enough to occupy her time. Running Edgar Conklin’s dry goods store for him didn’t begin to consume all of her energies, so she expended the rest of them trying to run everything else.
Virgil dislodged Bat from the chair, ignoring the way he ostentatiously limped over to the wall to join Morgan, and began sorting through the muddy complaints. One of them was about saloons, one of them was about dance halls, one of them was about Bat, one concerned her neighbor’s dog, and one was about Dog Kelly, though what Dolores Conklin thought the peacekeeping commission could do about the fact that the Mayor owned saloons, he didn’t know.
Everyone else continued to stand around, Bat and Morgan by the window and Wyatt and Holliday by the gun case, which was probably not the best thing to have Holliday standing next to. He was leaning against the corner formed by the side of the gun case and the wall, talking to Wyatt, but still, having him that close to that many weapons, even unloaded weapons, made Virgil twitchy.
“You still taking Allie to see the opera tonight, Virge?” Morgan asked. He was still looking out the window, God knew at what since there was nothing on that side of the jail but the vacant lot that separated them from the tobacco shop next door.
“Yeah, she’s been wanting to go.” Virgil wasn’t much of a man for opera himself-he preferred it when they sang in English-but Allie loved music of any kind, and every time a new musician or theater company performed at the courthouse or Saratoga saloon, he made a point of taking her.
“Oh good,” Morgan said brightly. “I think I’ll come too, and take Louisa.”
Virgil could almost hear his plans for a romantic evening die.
“Great idea, Morg,” Wyatt said. “Maybe I’ll come along, too.”
And the romantic evening alone with Allie in the city courthouse was dead.
“Who’s Louisa?” Bat asked.
“Oh God,” Wyatt groaned, “don’t get him started.”
“She’s wonderful,” Morgan announced brightly. “I met her last week when she came in with a complaint. She’s sweet, and she has a wonderful sense of humor, and her eyes are the same color as the sky in the morning.”
“You do realize that she’s a, a…” Wyatt trailed off, gesturing vaguely with one hand.
“I think the word Wyatt is looking for here is prostitute,” Doc said. He was still leaning against the gun cabinet, arms folded across his chest. He coughed, and straightened up slightly, then settled his shoulders back against the side of the cabinet.
“Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing,” Bat said. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a woman who’s got a bit of experience. Right, Holliday?”
Holliday, for a wonder, ignored him. Morgan did not.
“Louisa’s a lady anyway,” he said. “And I’m asking her to come to the theater with me, so you can stop talking about her ‘experience.’”
Virgil did his best to ignore them all, and continued shifting through the papers. Jake Bower wanted to make sure that the peacekeeping commission was aware that Wyatt and Bat had crossed the Arkansas River toll bridge without paying three weeks ago, and therefore owed him fifty cents in tolls, plus a ten cent late-fee that Virgil was pretty sure he was making up.
“Yes, but I think what Wyatt’s wondering,” Doc smirked, “is whether you will be paying for the privilege of her company this evening.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t going to put it into so many words.”
Morgan glared at Wyatt, looking much the same as he had as a kid when Wyatt had teased him about being shorter and bullied him into doing his chores. “You’re just jealous that you don’t have a girl to take to the theatre. And I’m not paying her. We don’t have a business arrangement; we have a loving relationship.”
Virgil finally gave up on trying to retain his dignity, and allowed himself to be sucked into the conversation. “Morgan, didn’t you just meet this young woman last week?”
“Haven’t the rest of you ever heard of love at first sight?”
“Nope,” Bat said.
“Oh, come on,” Morgan said defensively, “Virgil, you’re married. You believe in love at first sight, right?”
Virgil shook his head. “Took me a month before I was sure about Allie.” Actually, he’d been sure the first time she tried to cook for him. The biscuits had been horribly burned, and when he’d foolishly commented on it, she’d thrown one at him and told him to make his own dinner if he didn’t like hers. He’d actually made an attempt, but they’d both gotten distracted.
“Doc?” Morgan tried desperately.
“Doc doesn’t believe in anything,” Wyatt said. He grinned at Doc, who narrowed his eyes in mock irritation.
“I beg to differ. I think love at first sight is eminently possibly.”
There were three wanted posters at the bottom of the pile of papers, one for a Sam Bass, mid-twenties and mustached, who had sold off a herd of cattle north of Dodge and never handed the money over to the herd’s original owners, one for five men from Missouri named Elder who had been robbing banks in eastern Kansas, and one for John Wesley Hardin, who was still running around shooting people in Texas. Various lawmen there kept sending those in in hopes that Hardin might ride through Dodge and become their problem.
“See?” Morgan said. “Even Doc thinks Louisa and I were meant for each other.”
“I didn’t exactly say that.”
“Yeah, well.” Morgan folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Once the rest of you meet her, you’ll see. She’s perfect.”
Bat rolled his eyes, Wyatt shook his head, and Doc smirked.
“Ah, I see.” Doc clasped his heads in front of his chest in a manner Virgil suspected was intentionally girlish. “You are Louisa!” he exclaimed, sounding suspiciously like something from a Brontë novel. “She is always, always in your mind. She is more yourself than you are!” He flung his arms out dramatically, and continued gleefully in the same vein, “From the first day you met, you’ve know that all you want is to spend the rest of your life at her side. She’s everything pure and noble that you will never be, and when she smiles at you,” his voice dropped to a softer tone, “it makes you feel like you’re worth something after all.” Holliday had folded his arms over his chest and was staring off into the distance, speaking almost in a whisper. “And when she’s standing next to you, it’s easier to breathe.”
“Doc?” Wyatt asked, after a moment, looking vaguely confused.
Holliday’s eyes flicked over to Wyatt, and then he dropped his gaze to the floor and began studying the toes of his boots.
“You don’t have to make fun of me,” Morgan said, frowning now.
Under his moustache, Bat’s lips twitched upwards in the smallest of grins. “I never knew Kate was so all-fired special.”
“Kate?” Holliday asked blankly. “Who said anything about Kate? We were discussing the incomparable Miss Louisa.” He inclined his head towards Morgan, and flicked one hand in his general direction.
“I don’t know why Wyatt puts up with you,” Morgan told him.
“I don’t know why I put up with any of you,” Virgil announced. “If you‘ve got nothing better to do than stand around and talk, you could at least do some work while you’re at it.” He nodded at the three cells behind him. “The cells need sweeping out, and the guns in that cabinet need cleaning and oiling.”
“I’ve been in here all morning already,” Morgan said. He straightened up from his slouch against the wall and started for the door. “I need to go find Louisa and ask her about going to the theater with me.”
Sorry, Virge.” Wyatt shrugged, and turned to follow Morgan, tapping Holliday on the shoulder to get him to follow. “Doc and I were going to go for a ride.”
“You were going to go for a ride. I am going to return to the Dodge House to see if anyone in this town is in need of my professional services. Or possibly stay here and watch Masterson play with the broom.”
“I’ll clean the guns,” Bat announced immediately, “but I get the desk.”
“Come on, Doc,” Wyatt was saying, as the two of them walked out the door after Morgan, “you know nobody’s going to show up wanting their teeth pulled. A ride will be fun. You should spend some time outside once in a while.”
“I don’t like ‘outside…’”
Virgil unlocked the desk’s top drawer and dug out the keys to the gun cabinet, handing them to Bat. “Don’t even think about touching the triggers on any of them,” he ordered. Bat had a bad habit of filing down the trigger mechanisms of guns so that they would go off at the slightest pressure, making them easier to shoot, but also far more likely to go off by accident. No doubt it seemed like a good idea if you were twenty-four.
Bat took three strides across the room to the gun cabinet and opened the lock, then pulled down a long-barreled shotgun. “I’d like to take this moment to remind you that, technically, you’re my deputy.”
Virgil abandoned the desk chair to Bat and picked up the broom, heading for the closest cell. “Doesn’t make fiddling with firing mechanisms a good idea.”
Bat pulled off his coat, probably to avoid getting gun oil on the sleeves. He began disassembling the shotgun, head bent over his work so that only the back of his bowler hat was visible.
Virgil sighed, and started to sweep out the cells.
* * *
Dodge’s courthouse felt distinctly different when you weren’t there to give evidence. For one thing, all of the people who had crowded in to hear the opera this evening actually wanted to be there. Well, except for P.L. Beatty’s thirteen year old son, who was slumped in a chair next to his mother radiating sullen resentment, and tugging uncomfortably at his necktie.
Morgan and Miss Louisa were certainly happy to be there, but Wyatt had feeling that they would have been just as happy to be standing in the middle of a field somewhere. The way they were gazing at each other, they probably didn’t even notice that the opera was about to start.
What with the two of them, and with Virgil and Allie beyond them, steadfastly ignoring everything but the music and each other, Wyatt felt like the odd man out. At least Bat had taken his lady friend-whom Wyatt was pretty sure he’d seen on stage at one of Dodge’s dancehalls-away to a more secluded corner, possibly to give the other two couples more privacy, but more likely because he wanted more privacy himself.
Everybody had someone on their arm tonight but him.
Doc had said something about intending to come, but so far there was no sign of him or Kate. Wyatt hoped this didn’t mean that Doc had gotten sick again. He had seemed better this morning, but by the way he’d been leaning against Bat’s gun cabinet in the jail, he still wasn’t all that steady on his feet.
Then the opera started, and Wyatt was kept busy enough trying to figure out what was going on that he forgot to be uncomfortable. The Richings-Bernard Grand English Opera Company was turning out a remarkably good performance despite their lack of a real stage. Up at the front of the courthouse, where the judge usually presided, the two female singers were languishing on the witness stand, singing mournfully. Possibly, they were singing about how bored they were. Or maybe one of them was in love. Or dying.
The first act went on, and the two bored young ladies decided to dress up as farm girls and go to a party. Then, they met two young men dressed as farmers, and they all proceeded to sing at one another, clearly arguing about something. Since they were arguing in Italian, Wyatt wasn’t quite sure what that something was, but it involved lots of extravagant gestures and high pitches held for a very long time. At least it sounded pretty.
Someone coughed behind him, and Wyatt turned in his chair to see Doc standing in the aisle, with Kate beside him. Doc’s cravat was crooked, and Kate’s mass of pinned-up curls was coming loose from its careful arrangement. Which might explain the lateness.
“So,” Doc drawled, “have our heroines gotten themselves trapped in servitude yet?”
“That’s what they were arguing about?” Wyatt grinned. “Yeah, just now.”
“Ah, good. Then Martha hasn’t sung ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ yet. Kate wanted to hear that part.” Doc smiled back, a boyish grin that made his face look softer and less gaunt, and pulled a chair out for Kate. Once she was seated, he dropped into the chair beside Wyatt and settled back to watch the opera.
“Hey, Doc, Kate,” Morgan said, hauling his attention away from Louisa long enough to notice the newcomers. He nodded towards the ‘stage.’ “They’re going to sing ‘The Last Rose of Summer?’ I didn’t know one of those German composers wrote that.”
“He didn’t,” Doc said. He coughed, then added, “Apparently, Herr Flotow just liked the song.”
“Shhh,” Kate whispered. She leaned in close to Doc, so that her lips nearly brushed his ear, managing to give everybody present a glimpse down the front of her dress as she did so. “I’m trying to listen.”
“You want a translation, darlin’?” Doc asked.
Yep, there was definitely a reason they’d been late.
Mrs. Conklin, who was seated a good two rows ahead of them, turned in her seat to glare and make shushing motions.
Doc, completely undeterred by the weight of her disapproval, spent the rest of the second act providing Wyatt with one line summations of all the songs. Since he didn’t actually speak Italian, Wyatt strongly suspected that he was making everything up.
Sure enough, the prima donna actually did sing, ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ And she sang it in English, which meant that everyone in the theater-well, courthouse-could understand it.
As the male lead clasped her in his arms and began to sing about his overwhelming love for her-Wyatt didn’t need Doc to ‘translate’ that one-Kate hid a yawn behind one lace-mitted hand.
“If this is an opera, why hasn’t anyone been stabbed yet?” she asked.
“This is Martha, not Tosca,” Doc said, sounding vaguely regretful. Kate leaned towards him, her breasts not-so-subtly brushing his arm, and whispered something Wyatt was grateful he couldn’t hear in Doc’s ear. Doc turned to meet her gaze, eyebrows raised and clearly preparing to say something snide, and Kate bent her head down and kissed him on the edge of the jaw, then started trailing a line of kisses down his neck.
Two rows of seats ahead, Mrs. Conklin looked on in horror, murmuring something shocked to her husband-and, Wyatt saw in slowly dawning horror, to the town commissioner sitting next to him. The one that didn’t like Bat.
“Kate!” Doc hissed, ducking away. “We’re in public.”
The commissioner was frowning in a way that boded ill for Bat, Wyatt, and their chances of ever being reappointed as Dodge’s marshals. Mrs. Conklin was still whispering to him.
“What?” Kate was asking, “Are you ashamed of me?”
Wyatt pulled his attention away from Bat’s immanent political downfall to find Kate and Doc frowning at one another.
Doc made quieting gestures. “Wyatt doesn’t need any more trouble,” he said, and waved a hand in the general direction of the Conklins and the commissioner. “This sort of thing isn’t exactly going to help his and Masterson’s reputations. Especially now that they’ve got that preacher accusing them of ‘associating with society’s darker elements.’”
“‘Wyatt doesn’t need,’” Kate repeated in an angry hiss. “Why is it always Wyatt?”
Wyatt was suddenly intensely, deeply grateful that Bat wasn’t here witnessing this. In fact, he rather wished that the entire courthouse weren’t here witnessing this. He forcibly pulled his gaze away from the spectacle Doc and Kate were creating and stared straight ahead, trying to pretend that he was sitting there alone. It didn’t work. He could still hear them.
“Because Wyatt is my friend,” Doc said, voice firm even though he was speaking barely above a whisper.
“And what does that make me?” Kate demanded, slightly too loudly. People other than the Conklins were now turning around and looking.
Doc said nothing, simply looked down, shoulders slumping, and Kate stood up jerkily and turned on her heel with a swish of dark red sateen. She didn’t quite stomp out of the room, but she came as close as someone wearing a floor-length skirt could.
Wyatt, painfully conscious of the disapproving eyes fixed on him-and Virgil, Allie, and Morgan by extension-turned to Doc, intending to say something, he wasn’t sure what, to express his overwhelming irritation.
Doc was still slightly hunched over, one hand pressed against his side. “Sorry,” he started, and then was interrupted by a fit of coughing. “Sorry about that, Wyatt,” he managed to say, before succumbing to the spasms.
Mrs. Conklin was now glaring harder than ever before. Morgan and Louisa were ignoring her in favor of the love duet on stage. Virgil was glaring back.
Wyatt laid a hand on Doc’s shoulder, feeling the delicate shape of bones beneath the wool of his coat. “It’s all right,” he said. They were both silent for a second while Doc got his breath back.
“So,” Wyatt said softly, “what are they singing about now?”
* * *
In retrospect, going to the theater last evening had probably been a mistake. Doc had been feeling better the previous morning than he had for a week, but now his chest was tight and painful again, Kate was over by the bar flirting with every man who came near and making certain that Doc could see her doing it, and to make matters worse, he had ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ stuck in his head.
Also, it was entirely possible that he was in love with Wyatt.
Well, ‘love’ was probably too strong a word, Doc decided. He uncorked the bottle of whisky at his elbow-Beeson had long since learned better than to try and sell it to him by the glass-and poured himself a shot. Wyatt was nothing more than a friend. Possibly his only friend, but that was no reason to pretend that mere friendship was something that it wasn’t. Of course, Wyatt was a good friend, which was why drinking with him, or playing cards, or just sitting and talking with him was pleasant. The broadness of his shoulders and the way he could face down troublemakers through sheer force of personality had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.
Doc drained his whisky, savoring the heat of it as it spread through his chest. He coughed, wincing at the ache in his ribs, then refilled his glass and corked the bottle again. The golden brown alcohol was almost the same color as Wyatt’s eyes.
‘Oh God,’ Doc groaned inwardly. ‘Can’t I die a little faster?’ He rested his head in his hands for a moment, suppressing the urge to thump it against the table so that he could pound the overly sentimental thoughts out. He was turning into the heroine of a goddamned Brontë novel. ‘When he’s standing next to me, it’s easier to breathe.’ He couldn’t believe he had actually said that out load. In the presence of other people.
Over at the bar, Kate had managed to persuade one of the other patrons to buy her a drink. She saluted Doc with it, just to make certain that he knew she could find another man whenever she wanted and didn’t really need him, then took a sip. When he had returned from the theater last night, she had been in the Dodge House hotel waiting for him. She had made her opinion of Wyatt very clear, and then proceed to demonstrate exactly why it would benefit him to pay more attention to her than to Wyatt. It had been a very enjoyable demonstration, so why the hell couldn’t he get Wyatt out of his head? The man just stuck there, like that deplorable Irish ballad about dying roses.
At some point in the past two months, Wyatt’s good opinion had become more important to him than anyone’s had been since he left Georgia. Than anyone since Melanie. It was damned inconvenient.
There were sounds of a disturbance outside the saloon’s door, and Doc looked up from his not-remotely-the-same-color-as-Wyatt’s-eyes whisky to see the Reverend Jonah Dobson making his decidedly unwelcome return to the Long Branch.
Lovely. What a pity Dobson didn’t know about his new obsession with Wyatt. Then the odious man would have a whole new set of reasons to condemn him to the fires of hell. The kind of things that made mere drinking pale in comparison.
Chalk Beeson, who had an almost uncanny ability to sense trouble entering his bar, looked up as Dobson strode determinedly through the door and groaned. “Oh, Christ, it’s him.” He left off pouring one of Kate’s admirers a drink and turned to snap out an order at his nearest employee. “Go get Earp or Masterson. I want that man thrown out for good. Moralizing busybody; I’d like to comb his hair backwards.”
Dobson halted in front of the bar and turned to face the room, drawing himself up to his full height. He was nearly as tall as Wyatt, and therefore presented quite an impressive picture indeed.
“Brothers,” he began, “I beseech you, leave this den of error and veniality and return to your wives and families.”
From the back of the room, someone hooted, “Hey, Preacher, ain’t you got a wife?”
Dobson chose not to dignify that with a response. “Abandon this place and its sordid temptresses.” He gestured accusingly at the far end of the room, where two of Miss Hand’s girls were negotiating business with some cowhands. Neither of them, Doc noted, was Morgan’s new lady love. “Fallen women, purveyors of sexual perversion, bearing the rotten fruits of their ill labor. Would you carry sin back from them to contaminate the true flowers of womanhood in your marriage bed?”
“Hell,” one of Kate’s new swains called to the heckler in the back, “iff’n he could get himself a woman, he wouldn’t need to jaw at us about sex so much.”
Dobson glared at the man, reddish eyebrows drawing together over his pale eyes. “There speaks a man misled by vice.”
There was a chorus of snickering, and one of the heckler’s friends began to detail exactly how misled his comrade was. Doc drained his glass, poured himself a new drink, and settled back to watch the show. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so unpleasant an experience after all.
And then Dobson noticed Kate, leaning languidly against the bar beside the second heckler. In that particular corset, she was rather difficult to miss.
“You should shun this woman as you would shun a venomous snake,” he said, levelling his gaze on Kate and her two attempts to make Doc jealous. “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” he quoted. “Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot?”
Kate pulled her arm out of the grasp of the taller of her two admirers and stepped toward Dobson. “Who are you calling a snake, preacher man?” she demanded. “What I do is no concern of yours.”
Dobson looked past Kate as if she were not even there, as if merely conversing with her would somehow contaminate him. “Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body with her?” he continued. “For two, saith he, shall be one flesh.”
Each of Dobson’s sermons, Doc decided, was more irritating than the last. “Ask any man here if he cares,” he said evenly.
Dobson turned, frowning disapprovingly when he saw Doc. “Young man,” he said, “I grieve to see you here once again.” He picked up Doc’s bottle of whisky and read the label, then shook his head sadly.
“What a coincidence,” Doc said. “I am grieved to see you here once again.” He smiled at Dobson. He could tell by the man’s expression that it was not a nice smile, which was good, because he didn’t intend it to be. “Now, if you would be kind enough to return my whisky?”
“I can tell by your speech that you are an educated man,” Dobson said pompously. He set the whisky bottle down on a neighbouring table, where it was instantly snatched up by a gleeful cowhand. “It is not too late to turn aside from the course you have chosen. To forsake the company of such denigrates as these.” He raised a hand and pointed directly at Kate.
Off to his left, Doc could hear footsteps coming up the Long Branch’s steps. From the length of the stride, it sounded like Wyatt. For once he didn’t turn to check, instead keeping his gaze fixed on Dobson. What gave the man the right to make those sorts of comments about Kate? As she said, it was no concern of his.
“Well, according to St. Paul, I’m every bit as denigrate as she is. One flesh, and all of that.” Doc widened his smile a bit and brushed the edge of his coat open just far enough to give Dobson a glimpse of the ivory hilt of his .45. “If I were you, I would take care what I said. I would truly hate to have to take offence.”
Dobson’s grey-green eyes fixed on Doc’s gun, and he drew in a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. “You cannot silence the truth with violence, young man.” He turned to Wyatt, who had been standing by the door, arms folded, looking on. “Marshal Earp, this man is threatening me. I assume it is your duty to deal with that sort of thing.”
Kate gave Dobson a look that dripped with scorn and extricated herself from the two gentlemen-to offer them a title they didn’t deserve-at the bar. She glided across the room to Doc’s table and stood behind him, draping herself over his shoulders. Dobson’s face filled with disgust. It was a beautiful expression.
“Well, now, I wouldn’t say I heard any threats.” Wyatt offered Dobson a pleasant smile. Doc could tell the expression was utterly false. “Doc here was just asking you to be more polite. Can’t say I disagree with him, either. A man shouldn’t go around insulting ladies.”
“Or Kate,” Doc added. Kate pulled away from him and smacked him on the shoulder.
“Marshal,” Dobson persevered, “that man has a gun. I was given to understand that that was illegal on this side of the railroad line.”
“Gun?” Wyatt looked Doc up and down, then shrugged. “I don’t see a gun.” And of course, he didn’t, because Doc had by this point pulled his coat closed again.
“Of course not,” Dobson said carefully, as if speaking to a slow child. “It’s under his coat. Do your duty and confiscate it.”
“Sorry, Reverend. I’ve got to see a weapon in order to confiscate it.” Wyatt grinned at Doc, who found himself grinning back.
Dobson glanced from Doc to Wyatt and frowned. “Mr. Holliday seems to be on friendly terms with every lawman in town. Nevertheless,” and he took a step toward Wyatt, in an ill-advised attempt to out-loom him, “I insist that you do your duty and cease this blatant favouritism. I have been warned about the corrupt practices of this town’s officials, but it would sadden me greatly to find those warnings true.” Clearly, Dobson had been talking to the Conklins.
There was a tight pain building in the middle of Doc’s chest, but he fought down the urge to cough. He would be damned if he’d give Dobson another chance to look at him with pitying eyes and explain how the Good Lord cared more about his soul than his lungs.
“It’s Doctor Holliday,” Wyatt corrected him, “and my duty at the moment is actually to throw you out of Chalk’s saloon. Besides which, I’m not real inclined to inconvenience a friend for your sake at the moment, seeing how you pretty much sold me out to Allison the other day.”
The ache in Doc’s chest suddenly became insignificant beside his desire to blow a hole through Dobson’s head. “He did what?” he asked. His hand was on his revolver before he could think, ready to draw it and explain to the preacher exactly why one did not sell Wyatt out to crazy gunslingers, and especially not to psychotic killers like Clay Allison.
Kate’s hand closed around his wrist, squeezing in a silent warning.
Wyatt held his hands up, palms out. “Doc,” he said, “you know if you start something, Bat will blame me.”
Under normal circumstances, Doc wouldn’t have backed off simply because Wyatt was waving at him to calm down, but he had already caused Wyatt enough trouble last night with that scene in the courthouse. He lifted his hand free of his gun, and Kate released his wrist. “Bat doesn’t like him either,” he pointed out.
Wyatt grinned. “Yeah, but he’ll still blame me.” He turned back to Dobson. “Now, are you going to leave politely, or am I going to have to throw you out?”
Dobson straightened his cuffs and adjusted the set of his hat, demonstrating that he was leaving his own good time and not because Wyatt was forcing him to, and smiled pityingly at Doc. “Remember, young man, it is never too late to repent and turn to God. The Lord is forgiving.”
Doc glared at him, and seriously considered the merits of drawing on the sanctimonious bastard anyway, inconvenient for Wyatt or not. “The Lord may be forgiving, but I’m not.” He just managed to force the words out past the ache in his chest. He was not going to cough in front of Dobson.
Once the doors had closed on the overbearing, Bible-thumping sonuvabitch, Wyatt pulled out a chair and sat down next to Doc. “You keep flashing that shiny gun of yours in public, and I’m going to have to take it away.”
Doc didn’t answer. The coughing he had been trying to suppress finally broke free, and his lungs tried to turn themselves inside out.
Kate patted him on the shoulder and left, hopefully to get him a drink.
Someone’s hand was warm against the middle of Doc’s back. Wyatt. Luckily, he was coughing too hard to really appreciate it.
“What did Dobson say to get you so riled up?” Wyatt asked, when the coughing had trailed to a halt and Doc could breathe again. His hand was still against Doc’s back. Doc chose not to remind him of this.
“He took objection to Kate’s choice of professions.”
Wyatt nodded. “Yeah, That’d do it.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked. “Does it ever bother you? Her going off with other men?”
Doc shrugged. “She only does it when she’s mad at me. Or could when she could use the money. Besides,” he grinned, and quoted the last lines of that damnable song, “‘who would inhabit this bleak world alone?’”
Wyatt groaned, and pulled his hand away from Doc’s back to punch him lightly on the shoulder.
Kate came back then, a new bottle of whisky in hand, and took the seat on Doc’s other side. She poured herself a shot, and then poured Doc one. “Here,” she said, “Beeson says it’s on the house, and not to hesitate next time on his account.”
“Thank you, darlin’.” Doc accepted the shot glass and tossed its contents back. “If I see the good reverend again, it will be my pleasure.” He picked the new bottle up and held it out to Wyatt questioningly.
Wyatt shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ve got to get back to work. There’s a cattle drive hitting town soon.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Kate.” He nodded at her. She pretended not to notice.
Wyatt clapped Doc on the shoulder and left. Doc stared after him for a moment, then realised he was acting like a Brontë heroine again and got up to find a card game.
* * *
Initially, Virgil had been worried that the Reverend Dobson might cause trouble in Dodge. Now, after the scene he and Holliday had apparently caused in the Long Branch, Virgil was certain that the man was going to cause trouble. What with the cowhands who were trickling into town ahead of the cattle drives, and the men who were going to flood the town when the cattle actually arrived-which was going to happen any day now-the preacher was a riot waiting to happen.
Which was why Virgil and Wyatt were currently trying to locate the good reverend, to suggest that it might be healthier for him to leave town. Bat had offered his suspiciously enthusiastic assistance, but it had been decided that sending deputy marshals to talk to Dobson instead of a chief marshal who actively hated him would be more diplomatic. Holliday had offered his services as well, and for a moment, Wyatt had actually seemed to be considering it. Virgil had put a stop to that idea quickly.
After checking the front porch of every saloon north of the deadline, they finally found Dobson leaving Leonard’s restaurant. He looked to be in a good mood, but the moment he set eyes on Wyatt, the goodwill vanished.
“Mister Earp,” he said, tiredly. “Good afternoon. Did you want something?” he asked, in the manner of a man who clearly hoped that the answer would be no.
The question was obviously directed at Wyatt, but Virgil cut in before his brother could say anything tactless. Holliday was getting to be a bad influence on him. “We’re sorry to bother you, Reverend, but we thought you should know that there’s a pretty big cattle drive headed into town.”
“Yes, I had noticed an increased in the number of misguided revellers.” Dobson said. He folded his arms across his chest, and looked at the two of them sternly. “However, I’m sure you aren’t here to point out souls in need of saving.”
“Not so much, no,” Wyatt said. “Look, when those cowhands hit town, they’re going to be thirsty, and they’re going to be tired, and they’re going to want a drink and a woman, likely in about that order. And they’re not going to take kindly to someone telling them they can’t have either of those things.”
“Might be for the best if you left,” Virgil added.
“On the contrary, it’s all the more reason for me to-”
Wyatt’s jaw took on that determined set it always got just before he did something rash, and he interrupted Dobson mid-sentence. “Not to mention that if you go back in the Long Branch one more time, Chalk Beeson is going to break a whisky bottle over your head.”
“I’m afraid I have already given the patrons of Mr. Beeson’s establishment up for lost,” Dobson said. He actually sounded regretful, which made Virgil feel just a bit guilty about essentially strong-arming the man out of town. But not very.
“Reverend,” he said, “we’d count it as a favor if you’d leave. It’ll only cause trouble if you stick around.”
Dobson looked from Virgil to Wyatt and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I suppose there truly are those who refuse to be saved. Gentlemen,” he nodded at them, and made ready to go. “I shall remember this town in my prayers. Perhaps, in time…” and he tipped his hat to them and walked off down the street.
* * *
Notes: So. We’ve finally used the word “delicate” in reference to Doc. It’s official. We’re going to Hell. If, y’know, the fact that we’re now officially writing historical rps weren’t already ensuring that. Also, it has come to our attention that the past two chapters have both ended with anticlimaxes, and that this one is essentially conversation porn. We swear, the next chapter will have action.
Fredrich von Flotow and his operatic masterpiece really did exist, and Martha really was performed in Dodge City in 1877 (in the courthouse). Sam Bass and John Wesley Hardin were real western outlaws, and P.L. Beatty was the chief of Dodge City’s fire brigade. Whether he really had a thirteen-year-old son is anybody’s guess. Chalk Beeson was the owner and manager of the Long Branch saloon, and apparently had both a low tolerance for stupidity and a gift for colorful phrases. ‘Melanie’ is Melanie Holliday, Doc’s cousin, who joined a convent after he went west, and was apparently the most perfect Victorian woman ever. She’s said to be the inspiration for the character of Melanie in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.
The Reverend Jonah Dobson still isn’t real.
The Last Rose of Summer
Lyrics: Sir John Stevenson, 1761-1833
Words: Thomas Moore, 1779-1852
'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
No flower of her kindred,
No rose bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them;
'Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow
When friendships decay,
And from love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
And Gunslinger has a fangirl of sorts! One whom we have helped corrupt into the wonderful world of slash!
My life is just that mush more complete.
Gunslinger: Dodge City
Part Five: The First Stone, part II.
When Virgil arrived for his shift at the jail Thursday morning, he found Jonah Dobson preaching across the street.
“Brothers, you must open your hearts and let Jesus in. Only He can show you the sins hidden within your souls.”
Virgil had been keeping a weather eye on Reverend Dobson ever since he’d first hit town. There was just something about the preacher that made him uneasy. He might be preaching temperance and morality, but his sermons were still stirring people up. And now he had gotten hooked up with the Conklins, and that wouldn’t be healthy for anyone.
Least of all the Dodge City peacekeeping commission, if they had to listen to him go on all day. And if he stayed where he was, they were going to; the man’s lungs were certainly powerful enough to let him be heard from inside the jail.
“Look around you!” Dobson invited his listeners passionately. Virgil chose not to look. He had seen more of Dodge than Dobson, in his five-day stay, had likely even glanced at.
“This town labors under the weight of its sin. Its very leaders profit from the vices of its citizens, tempting those whom they should guide into saloons and dance halls. Do not succumb to these temptations, for they are the snares laid by Satan to pull you away from God and into poverty and degradation. Even those meant to protect you associate with the darker elements of society; gamblers, saloonkeepers, and fallen women!” Dobson flung one arm dramatically towards the jail, and Virgil turned to see Wyatt and Holliday standing by the building’s door, pointedly ignoring the show.
Holliday snickered visibly and jabbed an elbow into Wyatt’s side, then tried unsuccessfully to duck out of the way as Wyatt reached out and ruffled his hair.
“Cut it out! Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”
“Yeah, sure you will.”
There were moments when Virgil suspected that he was the only Earp brother who had managed to mature beyond the age of fourteen. Wyatt might be all of twenty-eight, but occasionally, it was hard to tell.
Suppressing the urge to groan, he turned a deaf ear to the rest of Dobson’s pointed ranting and strode toward the jail, taking hold of Wyatt’s arm as he passed him and hauling him inside.
Although Virgil had not intended it, Holliday followed along as well, since he was apparently attached to Wyatt by an invisible string.
Clearly, none of Dodge’s peacekeepers had anything better to do this morning than sit around the jail, because although it was Morgan’s shift, Bat was sitting behind the desk, bowler hat tilted at a jaunty angle and feet propped up atop a crisp new stack of Dolores Conklin’s letters of complaint. Morgan was standing by the window, gazing out at the sky with a peculiar dreamy look on his face. He had obviously found some new girl to moon over.
Sometimes, Virgil felt very old.
“What are all of you doing here?” Bat asked.
“It’s my shift,” Virgil said. “What are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to come in until this afternoon.”
“It’s my jail,” Bat said. “I can come in whenever I want to. And why is Holliday in my jail? He serves no purpose. Unless you’ve arrested him. Have you arrested him?” He sat up a little straighter, looking hopeful.
“No,” Wyatt said. “He was heckling Dobson.” He grinned. “You’re in here hiding from him, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” Bat scoffed. “I never hide. And anyway, he was talking to Mrs. Conklin.”
“So, you were hiding from her. That’s a real improvement, Bat.”
“I don’t hide from her,” Bat insisted, though everyone in the room knew it was a lie.
Virgil had no notion why she intimidated Bat so much. She was bothersome, sure, but she was basically just a woman with no children who didn’t have enough to occupy her time. Running Edgar Conklin’s dry goods store for him didn’t begin to consume all of her energies, so she expended the rest of them trying to run everything else.
Virgil dislodged Bat from the chair, ignoring the way he ostentatiously limped over to the wall to join Morgan, and began sorting through the muddy complaints. One of them was about saloons, one of them was about dance halls, one of them was about Bat, one concerned her neighbor’s dog, and one was about Dog Kelly, though what Dolores Conklin thought the peacekeeping commission could do about the fact that the Mayor owned saloons, he didn’t know.
Everyone else continued to stand around, Bat and Morgan by the window and Wyatt and Holliday by the gun case, which was probably not the best thing to have Holliday standing next to. He was leaning against the corner formed by the side of the gun case and the wall, talking to Wyatt, but still, having him that close to that many weapons, even unloaded weapons, made Virgil twitchy.
“You still taking Allie to see the opera tonight, Virge?” Morgan asked. He was still looking out the window, God knew at what since there was nothing on that side of the jail but the vacant lot that separated them from the tobacco shop next door.
“Yeah, she’s been wanting to go.” Virgil wasn’t much of a man for opera himself-he preferred it when they sang in English-but Allie loved music of any kind, and every time a new musician or theater company performed at the courthouse or Saratoga saloon, he made a point of taking her.
“Oh good,” Morgan said brightly. “I think I’ll come too, and take Louisa.”
Virgil could almost hear his plans for a romantic evening die.
“Great idea, Morg,” Wyatt said. “Maybe I’ll come along, too.”
And the romantic evening alone with Allie in the city courthouse was dead.
“Who’s Louisa?” Bat asked.
“Oh God,” Wyatt groaned, “don’t get him started.”
“She’s wonderful,” Morgan announced brightly. “I met her last week when she came in with a complaint. She’s sweet, and she has a wonderful sense of humor, and her eyes are the same color as the sky in the morning.”
“You do realize that she’s a, a…” Wyatt trailed off, gesturing vaguely with one hand.
“I think the word Wyatt is looking for here is prostitute,” Doc said. He was still leaning against the gun cabinet, arms folded across his chest. He coughed, and straightened up slightly, then settled his shoulders back against the side of the cabinet.
“Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing,” Bat said. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a woman who’s got a bit of experience. Right, Holliday?”
Holliday, for a wonder, ignored him. Morgan did not.
“Louisa’s a lady anyway,” he said. “And I’m asking her to come to the theater with me, so you can stop talking about her ‘experience.’”
Virgil did his best to ignore them all, and continued shifting through the papers. Jake Bower wanted to make sure that the peacekeeping commission was aware that Wyatt and Bat had crossed the Arkansas River toll bridge without paying three weeks ago, and therefore owed him fifty cents in tolls, plus a ten cent late-fee that Virgil was pretty sure he was making up.
“Yes, but I think what Wyatt’s wondering,” Doc smirked, “is whether you will be paying for the privilege of her company this evening.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t going to put it into so many words.”
Morgan glared at Wyatt, looking much the same as he had as a kid when Wyatt had teased him about being shorter and bullied him into doing his chores. “You’re just jealous that you don’t have a girl to take to the theatre. And I’m not paying her. We don’t have a business arrangement; we have a loving relationship.”
Virgil finally gave up on trying to retain his dignity, and allowed himself to be sucked into the conversation. “Morgan, didn’t you just meet this young woman last week?”
“Haven’t the rest of you ever heard of love at first sight?”
“Nope,” Bat said.
“Oh, come on,” Morgan said defensively, “Virgil, you’re married. You believe in love at first sight, right?”
Virgil shook his head. “Took me a month before I was sure about Allie.” Actually, he’d been sure the first time she tried to cook for him. The biscuits had been horribly burned, and when he’d foolishly commented on it, she’d thrown one at him and told him to make his own dinner if he didn’t like hers. He’d actually made an attempt, but they’d both gotten distracted.
“Doc?” Morgan tried desperately.
“Doc doesn’t believe in anything,” Wyatt said. He grinned at Doc, who narrowed his eyes in mock irritation.
“I beg to differ. I think love at first sight is eminently possibly.”
There were three wanted posters at the bottom of the pile of papers, one for a Sam Bass, mid-twenties and mustached, who had sold off a herd of cattle north of Dodge and never handed the money over to the herd’s original owners, one for five men from Missouri named Elder who had been robbing banks in eastern Kansas, and one for John Wesley Hardin, who was still running around shooting people in Texas. Various lawmen there kept sending those in in hopes that Hardin might ride through Dodge and become their problem.
“See?” Morgan said. “Even Doc thinks Louisa and I were meant for each other.”
“I didn’t exactly say that.”
“Yeah, well.” Morgan folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Once the rest of you meet her, you’ll see. She’s perfect.”
Bat rolled his eyes, Wyatt shook his head, and Doc smirked.
“Ah, I see.” Doc clasped his heads in front of his chest in a manner Virgil suspected was intentionally girlish. “You are Louisa!” he exclaimed, sounding suspiciously like something from a Brontë novel. “She is always, always in your mind. She is more yourself than you are!” He flung his arms out dramatically, and continued gleefully in the same vein, “From the first day you met, you’ve know that all you want is to spend the rest of your life at her side. She’s everything pure and noble that you will never be, and when she smiles at you,” his voice dropped to a softer tone, “it makes you feel like you’re worth something after all.” Holliday had folded his arms over his chest and was staring off into the distance, speaking almost in a whisper. “And when she’s standing next to you, it’s easier to breathe.”
“Doc?” Wyatt asked, after a moment, looking vaguely confused.
Holliday’s eyes flicked over to Wyatt, and then he dropped his gaze to the floor and began studying the toes of his boots.
“You don’t have to make fun of me,” Morgan said, frowning now.
Under his moustache, Bat’s lips twitched upwards in the smallest of grins. “I never knew Kate was so all-fired special.”
“Kate?” Holliday asked blankly. “Who said anything about Kate? We were discussing the incomparable Miss Louisa.” He inclined his head towards Morgan, and flicked one hand in his general direction.
“I don’t know why Wyatt puts up with you,” Morgan told him.
“I don’t know why I put up with any of you,” Virgil announced. “If you‘ve got nothing better to do than stand around and talk, you could at least do some work while you’re at it.” He nodded at the three cells behind him. “The cells need sweeping out, and the guns in that cabinet need cleaning and oiling.”
“I’ve been in here all morning already,” Morgan said. He straightened up from his slouch against the wall and started for the door. “I need to go find Louisa and ask her about going to the theater with me.”
Sorry, Virge.” Wyatt shrugged, and turned to follow Morgan, tapping Holliday on the shoulder to get him to follow. “Doc and I were going to go for a ride.”
“You were going to go for a ride. I am going to return to the Dodge House to see if anyone in this town is in need of my professional services. Or possibly stay here and watch Masterson play with the broom.”
“I’ll clean the guns,” Bat announced immediately, “but I get the desk.”
“Come on, Doc,” Wyatt was saying, as the two of them walked out the door after Morgan, “you know nobody’s going to show up wanting their teeth pulled. A ride will be fun. You should spend some time outside once in a while.”
“I don’t like ‘outside…’”
Virgil unlocked the desk’s top drawer and dug out the keys to the gun cabinet, handing them to Bat. “Don’t even think about touching the triggers on any of them,” he ordered. Bat had a bad habit of filing down the trigger mechanisms of guns so that they would go off at the slightest pressure, making them easier to shoot, but also far more likely to go off by accident. No doubt it seemed like a good idea if you were twenty-four.
Bat took three strides across the room to the gun cabinet and opened the lock, then pulled down a long-barreled shotgun. “I’d like to take this moment to remind you that, technically, you’re my deputy.”
Virgil abandoned the desk chair to Bat and picked up the broom, heading for the closest cell. “Doesn’t make fiddling with firing mechanisms a good idea.”
Bat pulled off his coat, probably to avoid getting gun oil on the sleeves. He began disassembling the shotgun, head bent over his work so that only the back of his bowler hat was visible.
Virgil sighed, and started to sweep out the cells.
* * *
Dodge’s courthouse felt distinctly different when you weren’t there to give evidence. For one thing, all of the people who had crowded in to hear the opera this evening actually wanted to be there. Well, except for P.L. Beatty’s thirteen year old son, who was slumped in a chair next to his mother radiating sullen resentment, and tugging uncomfortably at his necktie.
Morgan and Miss Louisa were certainly happy to be there, but Wyatt had feeling that they would have been just as happy to be standing in the middle of a field somewhere. The way they were gazing at each other, they probably didn’t even notice that the opera was about to start.
What with the two of them, and with Virgil and Allie beyond them, steadfastly ignoring everything but the music and each other, Wyatt felt like the odd man out. At least Bat had taken his lady friend-whom Wyatt was pretty sure he’d seen on stage at one of Dodge’s dancehalls-away to a more secluded corner, possibly to give the other two couples more privacy, but more likely because he wanted more privacy himself.
Everybody had someone on their arm tonight but him.
Doc had said something about intending to come, but so far there was no sign of him or Kate. Wyatt hoped this didn’t mean that Doc had gotten sick again. He had seemed better this morning, but by the way he’d been leaning against Bat’s gun cabinet in the jail, he still wasn’t all that steady on his feet.
Then the opera started, and Wyatt was kept busy enough trying to figure out what was going on that he forgot to be uncomfortable. The Richings-Bernard Grand English Opera Company was turning out a remarkably good performance despite their lack of a real stage. Up at the front of the courthouse, where the judge usually presided, the two female singers were languishing on the witness stand, singing mournfully. Possibly, they were singing about how bored they were. Or maybe one of them was in love. Or dying.
The first act went on, and the two bored young ladies decided to dress up as farm girls and go to a party. Then, they met two young men dressed as farmers, and they all proceeded to sing at one another, clearly arguing about something. Since they were arguing in Italian, Wyatt wasn’t quite sure what that something was, but it involved lots of extravagant gestures and high pitches held for a very long time. At least it sounded pretty.
Someone coughed behind him, and Wyatt turned in his chair to see Doc standing in the aisle, with Kate beside him. Doc’s cravat was crooked, and Kate’s mass of pinned-up curls was coming loose from its careful arrangement. Which might explain the lateness.
“So,” Doc drawled, “have our heroines gotten themselves trapped in servitude yet?”
“That’s what they were arguing about?” Wyatt grinned. “Yeah, just now.”
“Ah, good. Then Martha hasn’t sung ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ yet. Kate wanted to hear that part.” Doc smiled back, a boyish grin that made his face look softer and less gaunt, and pulled a chair out for Kate. Once she was seated, he dropped into the chair beside Wyatt and settled back to watch the opera.
“Hey, Doc, Kate,” Morgan said, hauling his attention away from Louisa long enough to notice the newcomers. He nodded towards the ‘stage.’ “They’re going to sing ‘The Last Rose of Summer?’ I didn’t know one of those German composers wrote that.”
“He didn’t,” Doc said. He coughed, then added, “Apparently, Herr Flotow just liked the song.”
“Shhh,” Kate whispered. She leaned in close to Doc, so that her lips nearly brushed his ear, managing to give everybody present a glimpse down the front of her dress as she did so. “I’m trying to listen.”
“You want a translation, darlin’?” Doc asked.
Yep, there was definitely a reason they’d been late.
Mrs. Conklin, who was seated a good two rows ahead of them, turned in her seat to glare and make shushing motions.
Doc, completely undeterred by the weight of her disapproval, spent the rest of the second act providing Wyatt with one line summations of all the songs. Since he didn’t actually speak Italian, Wyatt strongly suspected that he was making everything up.
Sure enough, the prima donna actually did sing, ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ And she sang it in English, which meant that everyone in the theater-well, courthouse-could understand it.
As the male lead clasped her in his arms and began to sing about his overwhelming love for her-Wyatt didn’t need Doc to ‘translate’ that one-Kate hid a yawn behind one lace-mitted hand.
“If this is an opera, why hasn’t anyone been stabbed yet?” she asked.
“This is Martha, not Tosca,” Doc said, sounding vaguely regretful. Kate leaned towards him, her breasts not-so-subtly brushing his arm, and whispered something Wyatt was grateful he couldn’t hear in Doc’s ear. Doc turned to meet her gaze, eyebrows raised and clearly preparing to say something snide, and Kate bent her head down and kissed him on the edge of the jaw, then started trailing a line of kisses down his neck.
Two rows of seats ahead, Mrs. Conklin looked on in horror, murmuring something shocked to her husband-and, Wyatt saw in slowly dawning horror, to the town commissioner sitting next to him. The one that didn’t like Bat.
“Kate!” Doc hissed, ducking away. “We’re in public.”
The commissioner was frowning in a way that boded ill for Bat, Wyatt, and their chances of ever being reappointed as Dodge’s marshals. Mrs. Conklin was still whispering to him.
“What?” Kate was asking, “Are you ashamed of me?”
Wyatt pulled his attention away from Bat’s immanent political downfall to find Kate and Doc frowning at one another.
Doc made quieting gestures. “Wyatt doesn’t need any more trouble,” he said, and waved a hand in the general direction of the Conklins and the commissioner. “This sort of thing isn’t exactly going to help his and Masterson’s reputations. Especially now that they’ve got that preacher accusing them of ‘associating with society’s darker elements.’”
“‘Wyatt doesn’t need,’” Kate repeated in an angry hiss. “Why is it always Wyatt?”
Wyatt was suddenly intensely, deeply grateful that Bat wasn’t here witnessing this. In fact, he rather wished that the entire courthouse weren’t here witnessing this. He forcibly pulled his gaze away from the spectacle Doc and Kate were creating and stared straight ahead, trying to pretend that he was sitting there alone. It didn’t work. He could still hear them.
“Because Wyatt is my friend,” Doc said, voice firm even though he was speaking barely above a whisper.
“And what does that make me?” Kate demanded, slightly too loudly. People other than the Conklins were now turning around and looking.
Doc said nothing, simply looked down, shoulders slumping, and Kate stood up jerkily and turned on her heel with a swish of dark red sateen. She didn’t quite stomp out of the room, but she came as close as someone wearing a floor-length skirt could.
Wyatt, painfully conscious of the disapproving eyes fixed on him-and Virgil, Allie, and Morgan by extension-turned to Doc, intending to say something, he wasn’t sure what, to express his overwhelming irritation.
Doc was still slightly hunched over, one hand pressed against his side. “Sorry,” he started, and then was interrupted by a fit of coughing. “Sorry about that, Wyatt,” he managed to say, before succumbing to the spasms.
Mrs. Conklin was now glaring harder than ever before. Morgan and Louisa were ignoring her in favor of the love duet on stage. Virgil was glaring back.
Wyatt laid a hand on Doc’s shoulder, feeling the delicate shape of bones beneath the wool of his coat. “It’s all right,” he said. They were both silent for a second while Doc got his breath back.
“So,” Wyatt said softly, “what are they singing about now?”
* * *
In retrospect, going to the theater last evening had probably been a mistake. Doc had been feeling better the previous morning than he had for a week, but now his chest was tight and painful again, Kate was over by the bar flirting with every man who came near and making certain that Doc could see her doing it, and to make matters worse, he had ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ stuck in his head.
Also, it was entirely possible that he was in love with Wyatt.
Well, ‘love’ was probably too strong a word, Doc decided. He uncorked the bottle of whisky at his elbow-Beeson had long since learned better than to try and sell it to him by the glass-and poured himself a shot. Wyatt was nothing more than a friend. Possibly his only friend, but that was no reason to pretend that mere friendship was something that it wasn’t. Of course, Wyatt was a good friend, which was why drinking with him, or playing cards, or just sitting and talking with him was pleasant. The broadness of his shoulders and the way he could face down troublemakers through sheer force of personality had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.
Doc drained his whisky, savoring the heat of it as it spread through his chest. He coughed, wincing at the ache in his ribs, then refilled his glass and corked the bottle again. The golden brown alcohol was almost the same color as Wyatt’s eyes.
‘Oh God,’ Doc groaned inwardly. ‘Can’t I die a little faster?’ He rested his head in his hands for a moment, suppressing the urge to thump it against the table so that he could pound the overly sentimental thoughts out. He was turning into the heroine of a goddamned Brontë novel. ‘When he’s standing next to me, it’s easier to breathe.’ He couldn’t believe he had actually said that out load. In the presence of other people.
Over at the bar, Kate had managed to persuade one of the other patrons to buy her a drink. She saluted Doc with it, just to make certain that he knew she could find another man whenever she wanted and didn’t really need him, then took a sip. When he had returned from the theater last night, she had been in the Dodge House hotel waiting for him. She had made her opinion of Wyatt very clear, and then proceed to demonstrate exactly why it would benefit him to pay more attention to her than to Wyatt. It had been a very enjoyable demonstration, so why the hell couldn’t he get Wyatt out of his head? The man just stuck there, like that deplorable Irish ballad about dying roses.
At some point in the past two months, Wyatt’s good opinion had become more important to him than anyone’s had been since he left Georgia. Than anyone since Melanie. It was damned inconvenient.
There were sounds of a disturbance outside the saloon’s door, and Doc looked up from his not-remotely-the-same-color-as-Wyatt’s-eyes whisky to see the Reverend Jonah Dobson making his decidedly unwelcome return to the Long Branch.
Lovely. What a pity Dobson didn’t know about his new obsession with Wyatt. Then the odious man would have a whole new set of reasons to condemn him to the fires of hell. The kind of things that made mere drinking pale in comparison.
Chalk Beeson, who had an almost uncanny ability to sense trouble entering his bar, looked up as Dobson strode determinedly through the door and groaned. “Oh, Christ, it’s him.” He left off pouring one of Kate’s admirers a drink and turned to snap out an order at his nearest employee. “Go get Earp or Masterson. I want that man thrown out for good. Moralizing busybody; I’d like to comb his hair backwards.”
Dobson halted in front of the bar and turned to face the room, drawing himself up to his full height. He was nearly as tall as Wyatt, and therefore presented quite an impressive picture indeed.
“Brothers,” he began, “I beseech you, leave this den of error and veniality and return to your wives and families.”
From the back of the room, someone hooted, “Hey, Preacher, ain’t you got a wife?”
Dobson chose not to dignify that with a response. “Abandon this place and its sordid temptresses.” He gestured accusingly at the far end of the room, where two of Miss Hand’s girls were negotiating business with some cowhands. Neither of them, Doc noted, was Morgan’s new lady love. “Fallen women, purveyors of sexual perversion, bearing the rotten fruits of their ill labor. Would you carry sin back from them to contaminate the true flowers of womanhood in your marriage bed?”
“Hell,” one of Kate’s new swains called to the heckler in the back, “iff’n he could get himself a woman, he wouldn’t need to jaw at us about sex so much.”
Dobson glared at the man, reddish eyebrows drawing together over his pale eyes. “There speaks a man misled by vice.”
There was a chorus of snickering, and one of the heckler’s friends began to detail exactly how misled his comrade was. Doc drained his glass, poured himself a new drink, and settled back to watch the show. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so unpleasant an experience after all.
And then Dobson noticed Kate, leaning languidly against the bar beside the second heckler. In that particular corset, she was rather difficult to miss.
“You should shun this woman as you would shun a venomous snake,” he said, levelling his gaze on Kate and her two attempts to make Doc jealous. “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” he quoted. “Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot?”
Kate pulled her arm out of the grasp of the taller of her two admirers and stepped toward Dobson. “Who are you calling a snake, preacher man?” she demanded. “What I do is no concern of yours.”
Dobson looked past Kate as if she were not even there, as if merely conversing with her would somehow contaminate him. “Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body with her?” he continued. “For two, saith he, shall be one flesh.”
Each of Dobson’s sermons, Doc decided, was more irritating than the last. “Ask any man here if he cares,” he said evenly.
Dobson turned, frowning disapprovingly when he saw Doc. “Young man,” he said, “I grieve to see you here once again.” He picked up Doc’s bottle of whisky and read the label, then shook his head sadly.
“What a coincidence,” Doc said. “I am grieved to see you here once again.” He smiled at Dobson. He could tell by the man’s expression that it was not a nice smile, which was good, because he didn’t intend it to be. “Now, if you would be kind enough to return my whisky?”
“I can tell by your speech that you are an educated man,” Dobson said pompously. He set the whisky bottle down on a neighbouring table, where it was instantly snatched up by a gleeful cowhand. “It is not too late to turn aside from the course you have chosen. To forsake the company of such denigrates as these.” He raised a hand and pointed directly at Kate.
Off to his left, Doc could hear footsteps coming up the Long Branch’s steps. From the length of the stride, it sounded like Wyatt. For once he didn’t turn to check, instead keeping his gaze fixed on Dobson. What gave the man the right to make those sorts of comments about Kate? As she said, it was no concern of his.
“Well, according to St. Paul, I’m every bit as denigrate as she is. One flesh, and all of that.” Doc widened his smile a bit and brushed the edge of his coat open just far enough to give Dobson a glimpse of the ivory hilt of his .45. “If I were you, I would take care what I said. I would truly hate to have to take offence.”
Dobson’s grey-green eyes fixed on Doc’s gun, and he drew in a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. “You cannot silence the truth with violence, young man.” He turned to Wyatt, who had been standing by the door, arms folded, looking on. “Marshal Earp, this man is threatening me. I assume it is your duty to deal with that sort of thing.”
Kate gave Dobson a look that dripped with scorn and extricated herself from the two gentlemen-to offer them a title they didn’t deserve-at the bar. She glided across the room to Doc’s table and stood behind him, draping herself over his shoulders. Dobson’s face filled with disgust. It was a beautiful expression.
“Well, now, I wouldn’t say I heard any threats.” Wyatt offered Dobson a pleasant smile. Doc could tell the expression was utterly false. “Doc here was just asking you to be more polite. Can’t say I disagree with him, either. A man shouldn’t go around insulting ladies.”
“Or Kate,” Doc added. Kate pulled away from him and smacked him on the shoulder.
“Marshal,” Dobson persevered, “that man has a gun. I was given to understand that that was illegal on this side of the railroad line.”
“Gun?” Wyatt looked Doc up and down, then shrugged. “I don’t see a gun.” And of course, he didn’t, because Doc had by this point pulled his coat closed again.
“Of course not,” Dobson said carefully, as if speaking to a slow child. “It’s under his coat. Do your duty and confiscate it.”
“Sorry, Reverend. I’ve got to see a weapon in order to confiscate it.” Wyatt grinned at Doc, who found himself grinning back.
Dobson glanced from Doc to Wyatt and frowned. “Mr. Holliday seems to be on friendly terms with every lawman in town. Nevertheless,” and he took a step toward Wyatt, in an ill-advised attempt to out-loom him, “I insist that you do your duty and cease this blatant favouritism. I have been warned about the corrupt practices of this town’s officials, but it would sadden me greatly to find those warnings true.” Clearly, Dobson had been talking to the Conklins.
There was a tight pain building in the middle of Doc’s chest, but he fought down the urge to cough. He would be damned if he’d give Dobson another chance to look at him with pitying eyes and explain how the Good Lord cared more about his soul than his lungs.
“It’s Doctor Holliday,” Wyatt corrected him, “and my duty at the moment is actually to throw you out of Chalk’s saloon. Besides which, I’m not real inclined to inconvenience a friend for your sake at the moment, seeing how you pretty much sold me out to Allison the other day.”
The ache in Doc’s chest suddenly became insignificant beside his desire to blow a hole through Dobson’s head. “He did what?” he asked. His hand was on his revolver before he could think, ready to draw it and explain to the preacher exactly why one did not sell Wyatt out to crazy gunslingers, and especially not to psychotic killers like Clay Allison.
Kate’s hand closed around his wrist, squeezing in a silent warning.
Wyatt held his hands up, palms out. “Doc,” he said, “you know if you start something, Bat will blame me.”
Under normal circumstances, Doc wouldn’t have backed off simply because Wyatt was waving at him to calm down, but he had already caused Wyatt enough trouble last night with that scene in the courthouse. He lifted his hand free of his gun, and Kate released his wrist. “Bat doesn’t like him either,” he pointed out.
Wyatt grinned. “Yeah, but he’ll still blame me.” He turned back to Dobson. “Now, are you going to leave politely, or am I going to have to throw you out?”
Dobson straightened his cuffs and adjusted the set of his hat, demonstrating that he was leaving his own good time and not because Wyatt was forcing him to, and smiled pityingly at Doc. “Remember, young man, it is never too late to repent and turn to God. The Lord is forgiving.”
Doc glared at him, and seriously considered the merits of drawing on the sanctimonious bastard anyway, inconvenient for Wyatt or not. “The Lord may be forgiving, but I’m not.” He just managed to force the words out past the ache in his chest. He was not going to cough in front of Dobson.
Once the doors had closed on the overbearing, Bible-thumping sonuvabitch, Wyatt pulled out a chair and sat down next to Doc. “You keep flashing that shiny gun of yours in public, and I’m going to have to take it away.”
Doc didn’t answer. The coughing he had been trying to suppress finally broke free, and his lungs tried to turn themselves inside out.
Kate patted him on the shoulder and left, hopefully to get him a drink.
Someone’s hand was warm against the middle of Doc’s back. Wyatt. Luckily, he was coughing too hard to really appreciate it.
“What did Dobson say to get you so riled up?” Wyatt asked, when the coughing had trailed to a halt and Doc could breathe again. His hand was still against Doc’s back. Doc chose not to remind him of this.
“He took objection to Kate’s choice of professions.”
Wyatt nodded. “Yeah, That’d do it.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked. “Does it ever bother you? Her going off with other men?”
Doc shrugged. “She only does it when she’s mad at me. Or could when she could use the money. Besides,” he grinned, and quoted the last lines of that damnable song, “‘who would inhabit this bleak world alone?’”
Wyatt groaned, and pulled his hand away from Doc’s back to punch him lightly on the shoulder.
Kate came back then, a new bottle of whisky in hand, and took the seat on Doc’s other side. She poured herself a shot, and then poured Doc one. “Here,” she said, “Beeson says it’s on the house, and not to hesitate next time on his account.”
“Thank you, darlin’.” Doc accepted the shot glass and tossed its contents back. “If I see the good reverend again, it will be my pleasure.” He picked the new bottle up and held it out to Wyatt questioningly.
Wyatt shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ve got to get back to work. There’s a cattle drive hitting town soon.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Kate.” He nodded at her. She pretended not to notice.
Wyatt clapped Doc on the shoulder and left. Doc stared after him for a moment, then realised he was acting like a Brontë heroine again and got up to find a card game.
* * *
Initially, Virgil had been worried that the Reverend Dobson might cause trouble in Dodge. Now, after the scene he and Holliday had apparently caused in the Long Branch, Virgil was certain that the man was going to cause trouble. What with the cowhands who were trickling into town ahead of the cattle drives, and the men who were going to flood the town when the cattle actually arrived-which was going to happen any day now-the preacher was a riot waiting to happen.
Which was why Virgil and Wyatt were currently trying to locate the good reverend, to suggest that it might be healthier for him to leave town. Bat had offered his suspiciously enthusiastic assistance, but it had been decided that sending deputy marshals to talk to Dobson instead of a chief marshal who actively hated him would be more diplomatic. Holliday had offered his services as well, and for a moment, Wyatt had actually seemed to be considering it. Virgil had put a stop to that idea quickly.
After checking the front porch of every saloon north of the deadline, they finally found Dobson leaving Leonard’s restaurant. He looked to be in a good mood, but the moment he set eyes on Wyatt, the goodwill vanished.
“Mister Earp,” he said, tiredly. “Good afternoon. Did you want something?” he asked, in the manner of a man who clearly hoped that the answer would be no.
The question was obviously directed at Wyatt, but Virgil cut in before his brother could say anything tactless. Holliday was getting to be a bad influence on him. “We’re sorry to bother you, Reverend, but we thought you should know that there’s a pretty big cattle drive headed into town.”
“Yes, I had noticed an increased in the number of misguided revellers.” Dobson said. He folded his arms across his chest, and looked at the two of them sternly. “However, I’m sure you aren’t here to point out souls in need of saving.”
“Not so much, no,” Wyatt said. “Look, when those cowhands hit town, they’re going to be thirsty, and they’re going to be tired, and they’re going to want a drink and a woman, likely in about that order. And they’re not going to take kindly to someone telling them they can’t have either of those things.”
“Might be for the best if you left,” Virgil added.
“On the contrary, it’s all the more reason for me to-”
Wyatt’s jaw took on that determined set it always got just before he did something rash, and he interrupted Dobson mid-sentence. “Not to mention that if you go back in the Long Branch one more time, Chalk Beeson is going to break a whisky bottle over your head.”
“I’m afraid I have already given the patrons of Mr. Beeson’s establishment up for lost,” Dobson said. He actually sounded regretful, which made Virgil feel just a bit guilty about essentially strong-arming the man out of town. But not very.
“Reverend,” he said, “we’d count it as a favor if you’d leave. It’ll only cause trouble if you stick around.”
Dobson looked from Virgil to Wyatt and sighed, shoulders slumping. “I suppose there truly are those who refuse to be saved. Gentlemen,” he nodded at them, and made ready to go. “I shall remember this town in my prayers. Perhaps, in time…” and he tipped his hat to them and walked off down the street.
* * *
Notes: So. We’ve finally used the word “delicate” in reference to Doc. It’s official. We’re going to Hell. If, y’know, the fact that we’re now officially writing historical rps weren’t already ensuring that. Also, it has come to our attention that the past two chapters have both ended with anticlimaxes, and that this one is essentially conversation porn. We swear, the next chapter will have action.
Fredrich von Flotow and his operatic masterpiece really did exist, and Martha really was performed in Dodge City in 1877 (in the courthouse). Sam Bass and John Wesley Hardin were real western outlaws, and P.L. Beatty was the chief of Dodge City’s fire brigade. Whether he really had a thirteen-year-old son is anybody’s guess. Chalk Beeson was the owner and manager of the Long Branch saloon, and apparently had both a low tolerance for stupidity and a gift for colorful phrases. ‘Melanie’ is Melanie Holliday, Doc’s cousin, who joined a convent after he went west, and was apparently the most perfect Victorian woman ever. She’s said to be the inspiration for the character of Melanie in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.
The Reverend Jonah Dobson still isn’t real.
The Last Rose of Summer
Lyrics: Sir John Stevenson, 1761-1833
Words: Thomas Moore, 1779-1852
'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
No flower of her kindred,
No rose bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them;
'Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow
When friendships decay,
And from love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered
And fond ones are flown
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?