Doctor Who: The Gunfighters by Donald Cotton Read Free Book Online

him...’
    ‘Tell him,’ said Ike, ‘we’d take it as a personal favour if he was to give us a song before chow time. On account of...
    say this... say that we have been riding the range, and far removed from cultural distractions, since we can’t remember when. That’ll fetch him.’
    ‘Bound to,’ agreed Seth. ‘You know what these here artistes is like. Give ’em any excuse, an’ they sets to warblin’ like a... like a...’
    ‘Summer frog?’ returned Phineas. They ignored him.
    The time for that sort of thing was long gone. Hereon in, it was serious.
    ‘An’ while Phin’s takin’ care of that little matter,’
    pursued Ike, sternly, ‘you take a mosey down Main Street, Seth, an’ see if you cain’t find Holliday. I’m gettin’ a mite tired of jest settin’ here, waitin’... I’ve had enough!’
    ‘You surely have,’ agreed Seth; and he high-tailed it for the Great Outdoors, before Ike could work that one out.
     
    9

A Pardonable Error
    Gun-slingers who mosey down Main Streets, are – thank God! – a breed apart; and it suits them. They do not, that is to say, simply walk from point A to point B, same like you or I would do, if there was anything in it for us. No, they prefer to zig-zag about, like a graph of the trade figures in a bad month; occasionally spinning on their heels and snarling, before dropping on to their stomachs and rolling over and over to the nearest horse-trough –
    where they can lie, breathing deeply, until ready to proceed.
    It is a strange discipline they follow: and one which would likely lead to their being hauled off to the nearest laughing-academy – were it not, of course, for the fact that they are armed to the teeth, and would resent any such interference with their liberty.
    Well, it’s a free country, as you may have heard; and so the citizens of Tombstone were generally prepared to take the broad view, and let them get on with it. After all, it’s their own clothes they’re ruining, ain’t it? And if a man can’t roll in the horse-flop whenever he feels that way, what is our fair land coming to?
    And so Seth Harper attracted little but that modicum of attention required to avoid stepping on him, as he ducked and weaved through the weekday shoppers, like a play-pool dinghy rounding Cape Horn in a cyclone. And pretty soon, in the course of this routing, he fetched up against Holliday’s shop-front; where he stood for a moment, frozen, as they say, into immobility, before cautiously swivelling his unpleasant head on its point of attachment, and peeking narrowly through the window.
    And what did he see? Why, a dapper little man in a velvet, box-back coat, and a fancy gambler’s vest; whose face may have been partly obscured for the moment by a blood-stained bandana clapped to the jaw, but who otherwise fitted the description so lovingly itemised by the police artists of several South-Western states.
    There could, so Seth reasoned, be no mistake: this was the notorious rattlesnake of the Wild Frontier, the living legend himself, Doc Holliday. Besides, the man’s name was above the door, weren’t it? And if that didn’t clinch the matter beyond all reasonable doubt, what, he would like to know, could?
    He was wrong, of course; but can perhaps be forgiven under the circumstances. And the stress of emotion too –
    don’t forget that! Emotions were a thing he wasn’t used to
    – and they had taken their toll. Because, having been so often told about them, he knew his limitations; and he wasn’t by no means about to push things to a fatal conclusion with that one – not all on his own. No, sir! I mean, come on !
    So, summoning what he supposed to be a friendly smile from somewhere, and with hands akimbo, well away from his gun-belt, he sauntered into the shop...
    As you will have gathered, Doc Holliday himself had retired from the scene briefly, shortly after completing his miracle of modern surgery; ostensibly to show the decayed ivory trophy to Kate;