Gunman's Rhapsody

Wyatt’s horse pricked his ears up and forward. Wyatt heard it too, behind the house. He moved the horse forward and around the corner of the house. Bent low as if to conceal himself, a man was running for the brush cover, trying to keep the house between him and the posse. Wyatt’s horse shifted into a trot, and Wyatt caught up with the man and passed him and turned the horse in front of him. Morgan came around the other side of the house on the dapple gray mare he was so proud of. As the man broke the other way, Wyatt turned him again and, with Morgan on the other side, slowly herded him, his desperate dashes becoming shorter and more breathless, back out in front of the house until he stood exhausted in front of the posse.

“You know him?” Behan said.

Redfield didn’t speak.

“What’s your name?” Behan said.

The man’s breath was rasping loudly in and out. Behan had to ask him again.

“Luther…” he said. “… King.”

“I’m Sheriff Behan,” Johnny said. “I’m head of this posse, and we’re looking for the people held up the Benson stage.”

“I… didn’t… have… nothing… to do… with that,” King gasped.

“What you doing, sneaking out the back way?”

“I didn’t do nothing but hold the horses,” King said. “That’s all. Just holding the horses. I didn’t know there’d be no shooting.”

Redfield stood motionless on his porch, his arms folded tight over his chest. The horsemen sat quietly in a semicircle around King so that he had to look up to look at them. Behan sat his big white-stockinged bay gelding directly in front of King.

“Who’d you hold the horses for?” Behan said.

“I can’t tell you that,” King said. “You know I can’t peach on my friends like that.”

Bob Paul leaned forward in his saddle, his forearms resting on the pommel.

“You know who this man is, Luther?” He nodded toward Holliday.

King shook his head.

“This is Doc Holliday. You know who Doc Holliday is, Luther?”

“Yes.”

Holliday sat motionless on his horse and stared at King.

“You wonder why Doc Holliday is on a posse, him not being too much of a lawman usually?”

Behan smiled. Several of the riders laughed audibly. King shook his head.

“He’s here on a mission of vengeance,” Paul said. “His beloved Katy was on that stage, and somebody shot her.”

“I didn’t do no shooting,” King said. “I just held the horses.”

He looked down, and away from Holliday.

“Then you better tell me who done the shooting,” Holliday said. His voice was hoarse and there was no inflection to it.

“I can’t,” King said.

Holliday lowered the shotgun slowly toward him.

“Somebody’s going to die for Kate,” Holliday rasped.

“For God’s sake, man,” Virgil said. “For your own sake, tell him.”

“Who?” Holliday said.

Tears began to well in King’s eyes.

“Billy Leonard,” King blurted, his voice thick. “And Harry Head and Jim Crane. I just held the horses. I didn’t see nothing. I didn’t do nothing.”

“Rustlers,” Wyatt said.

“Where are they now?” Holliday rasped.

“They lit out. Head disappeared soon as the shooting started. Billy and Jim, they changed horses here, rode west across the river, going like hell.”

“Lenny rides with the rustlers too,” Wyatt said. “Him and his brother.”

“Got nothing on Len,” Behan said. “He had no way of knowing. He just traded some horses.”

“And tried to let Luther here get away,” Wyatt said.

“Appreciate your help on this, Wyatt, but I’m the sheriff, and you’re just along to help shoot, you know what I mean.”

Wyatt looked at Virgil, and both men smiled in a way that Behan didn’t understand, though he knew he didn’t like it.

“We’ll take Luther back to Tombstone,” Behan said. “Rest of you can follow on, see if you can’t run down these other fellas.”

“Behan and all his deputies?” Wyatt said.

“Under heavy guard,” Virgil murmured.

“I’m sorry about your wife, Mr. Holliday,” Luther said.

Doc grinned at him. “Kate ain’t my wife,” he said. “She wasn’t on the stage. She didn’t get shot, and if she had, I wouldn’t care.”

King looked as if he, Holliday, had said too much too fast, but Doc was already turning his horse, the shotgun back in the saddle scabbard under his leg. His shoulders shook. It might have been laughter, Wyatt knew. Or he might have been coughing.

Twenty-one

Propped against his saddle, Holliday wrote by firelight in a small notebook.

“You writing about our thrilling adventures, Doc?” Wyatt said. “Sell it to one of those magazines in New York City.”

“I’m writing a letter to my cousin,” Holliday said.

“You got a cousin can read?” Morgan said.

“This one can,” Holliday said. “She’s a nun.”

“Goddamn,” Morgan said. “A nun? You a papist, Doc?”

“She is,” Holliday said. “And I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

Morgan shrugged. There was a thin rasp in Holliday’s voice that Morgan recognized. Doc sure did have a hair trigger.

“You telling her about us heroic lawmen?”

Doc snorted.

“I’m telling her that I’ll mail this tomorrow because I’m hauling my sore ass back into Tombstone,” he said, “instead of chasing around in these mountains like a goddamned fool.”

“Quitting, Doc?” Virgil said.