The Doctor and the Rough Rider by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online

have run part of it,” admitted
     Roosevelt with a grin. “How long a rest do you think you'll need?”
    Holliday shrugged. “I don't know. Until I feel stronger. Why?”
    “Well, I thought if it would be more than ten or fifteen minutes, I'd pull a book
     out of my saddlebag and read a chapter or two.”
    “Damn!” said Holliday, shaking his head in wonderment. “You are the most remarkable
     young man I've ever met.”
    “Surely you're not going to tell me you never read,” said Roosevelt. “Bat told me
     you minored in classical literature.”
    “I did,” agreed Holliday. “But I know better than to take a book along when it's a
     million degrees and we're on our way to visit Geronimo in his own lodge.”
    “Are you expecting trouble?” asked Roosevelt curiously. “After all, he wants to see me.”
    “He's seeing you in the one place he feels protected,” noted Holliday. “Remember,
     he told me that the other medicine men aren't ready to lift the spell yet. They don't
     figure to be too thrilled with this meeting.”
    “They don't know who I am or what I'm doing here.”
    “Damn it, Theodore, they're medicine men . They can hold an entire nation on one side of the Mississippi when it wants to expand.
     Believe me, they know what you're here for.”
    “Tell me about them,” said Roosevelt, taking a sip of water from his canteen. “What can they do besides keeping most of us—not all , I must point out—east of the river?”
    “You ever hear of Johnny Ringo?”
    “Yes,” said Roosevelt. “I think he was killed about four or five years ago in Texas.”
    “He was,” agreed Holliday. “The first time.”
    Roosevelt frowned. “The first time?”
    Holliday nodded. “A medicine man named Hook Nose brought him back from the dead, bullet
     holes and all, and sent him to kill Tom Edison.”
    “He obviously didn't succeed.”
    “Tom had an equalizer.”
    “You?” asked Roosevelt.
    Holliday smiled. “He invented the equalizer. I fired it.”
    “I'm glad I hit it off with him and Ned last night,” said Roosevelt. “I have a feeling
     we may need his help.”
    “That's what he's here for,” said Holliday. “The government sent him West to study
     the medicine men and try to invent something to counter their magic.”
    “He's turned Tombstone into a more futuristic town than Manhattan,” noted Roosevelt.
     “Has he had any luck with the medicine men?”
    “Minimal,” answered Holliday. “Little bits here and there, against Hook Nose and others.
     But he hasn't been able to lift the spell. Hopefully Geronimo will do it for him.”
    “Geronimo's the most powerful of them?”
    “He'd better be, because he's going to have fifty or sixty of them opposing him.”
     Suddenly Holliday smiled. “And you.”
    “And us ,” Roosevelt corrected him.
    “Not me. I'm just an onlooker.”
    “Sure,” said Roosevelt with his characteristic grin. “That's why you contacted me
     and why you're riding across the desert to Geronimo's lodge.”
    “Circumstance,” said Holliday.
    “We'll see,” said Roosevelt.
    “A month from now I'll be checking into a sanitarium in Colorado, and living out what
     remains of my life as comfortably as possible,” said Holliday.
    “I don't think so,” said Roosevelt.
    “Why the hell not?” demanded Holliday pugnaciously.
    “Because exceptional men are few and far between. You happen to be one, John Henry
     Holliday. You are capable of remarkable feats, some of them distasteful, all of them
     exceptional—and it's my observation that Fate usually has plans for exceptional men.”
    Holliday pulled out a fresh handkerchief and coughed into it. It came away bloody.
     “Fate's played enough tricks on me already,” he said, pocketing the handkerchief.
     “All I want it to do is leave me alone.” He paused. “All I ever wanted to be was a
     dentist and a loving husband. I didn't plan to be a shootist, or spend most of my
     adult life living with a hard-drinking