Doc: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell Read Free Book Online Page B

joke if he were to circle back into Kansas again.”
    The Georgian had used more words in five minutes than Wyatt had spoken during 1872 and ’73, combined. It took a moment to get his thoughts together, but Wyatt thanked him for the information.
    They spoke briefly about Dodge.
    “Bigger’n Wichita now,” Wyatt said. “Thousands of drovers. Money to throw at the birds.”
    “Any dentists in residence, sir?”
    It was a strange thing to ask, but Wyatt answered, “Not when I left.”
    “Well, now, that sounds promisin’,” the other man said. “My companion and I have been discussin’ a move to that city, which is to say Miss Kate will not take no for my answer and I am bein’ worn to a nubbin on the subject. I have begun to think of reopenin’ my practice. From what you say, the plan is not unreasonable—”
    It was only after a short spell with an ugly hacking cough that the gentleman lifted the shot glass to his lips. He took a sip of bourbon, eyes on Wyatt’s mouth, and set his glass down. With a slowness that signaled no ill intent, he drew a flat silver case from his inside pocket. From this, with long, slender fingers, he extracted a pasteboard card and reached across the table to offer it to Wyatt.
    “J. H. Holliday,” Wyatt read aloud to make sure he got it right. “Doctor of Dental … Sugery?”
    “Surgery,” Holliday corrected gently. “I am a dentist.”
    Wyatt’s hand went to his mustache, to smooth it, and to make sure it covered his lips.
    “I can help you, sir,” the dentist said quietly. “Look me up when you get back to Dodge, y’hear?”
    They shook hands. Holliday didn’t look sturdy enough to stand up in a stiff wind, but his grip was surprisingly strong.
    Wyatt sent a telegram to Bat Masterson, alerting him to the rumor that Rudabaugh might return to Kansas. Wyatt himself continued to pursue the fugitive toward Galveston, in case Dirty Dave was as stupid as the dentist thought and proved it by staying in one place more than a night or two. Then, after three bone-chilling months of chasing Rudabaugh across Texas and into Missouri as far as Joplin, Wyatt got word that Dirty Dave had been arrested a little east of Dodge, near Kinsley, Kansas, where he’d tried to rob another train.
    The reward would go to Bat and the Kinsley city marshal.
    It was hard not to feel bitter about that.
    With little else to occupy his mind, Wyatt found himself brooding about how Ed and Bat Masterson had managed to get so far ahead of him in life. Just five years ago, those two kids were doing Wyatt’s scut work, wrenching the skins off thousand-pound buffalo carcasses from dawn to dusk. Stinking of blood and filthy for months at a time, Bat and Ed would banter and josh all day, and compete all winter to be the first to get Wyatt Earp to smile. He paid them no mind and concentrated instead on dropping bison for them. They were young, of course, and game, but Wyatt didn’t think either of them would amount to much.
    Now Bat was sheriff of Ford County at twenty-four, and Ed was only twenty-six when he made chief deputy in Dodge. Wyatt himself was about to turn thirty, with nothing to show for it. That was starting to eat at him.
    At least Ed Masterson was earning his salary running the city police force for Fat Larry; as far as Wyatt could see, Bat was paid to sit around in bars, telling stories to his cronies. Bat was a good man in a fight, but he won sheriff mostly on the strength of being “the hero of Adobe Walls,” as if there weren’t twenty-seven other men right there with him, shooting at those Comanches. And the way Bat told it, you were sort of invited to believe he’d been wounded while rescuing two little girls from the Indians, even though Wyatt knew for a fact Bat got himself shot in a fight over a dance hall girl, down in Sweetwater. After he got elected, Bat started dressing fancier than a Kansas City hooker. Brocade vests, silk sashes, embroidered shirts. He even designed himself