Mary Russell - Doc

The howling Fates were sure they had him this time.

By December, however, after five long months of rest under Cousin George’s watchful eye, John Henry was back on his feet, though he would need a walking stick, off and on, for the rest of his life. He was not robust—never had been, never would be—but the leaden tubercular fatigue had lifted. His appetite returned. He put on a little weight and had more energy. The chest pain had eased and his cough was drier, not so deep or exhausting.

The economy, too, was showing signs of recovery, the cousins noted. The idea of a part-time dental practice no longer seemed unrealistic. If John Henry were not quite so dependent on dealing faro and playing poker, he could at least diminish the dangers and debilitation of the sporting life.

He recognized that he’d been given another chance and resolved to change his ways. When the New Year turned, 1878 seemed as good a time as any to reform. He’d already given up tobacco, almost, and was hardly drinking at all. He would continue to eat decently. Get out in the sunshine more.

He began to think that maybe he could beat this thing after all.

Hope smiled, and the Fates laughed.

Waiting at the Dallas depot for the train that would take George back to their family in Atlanta, John Henry promised his cousin that he would regularize his routines and build upon the gains he’d made. But for all his resolution, he lost heart when the train pulled away, leaving him alone again in Texas.

He went back to his room and tried to read, but the silence was too loud. He needed company, and a drink. He found a poker game, and Kate.

“ Cito acquiritur, cito perit ,” she murmured when he lost a $700 hand.

Without thinking, he heard the phrase as plainly as if she’d said it in English. Easy come, easy go. Leaning back in his chair, he gazed at a small, fair-haired whore with eyes the color of Indian turquoise. He’d seen her before. She liked to watch the gamblers when she wasn’t working.

“Game’s not over yet. Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit ,” he remarked experimentally.

Astonished, she said, “ Lingua Latina non mortua est! ”

“Latin’s not dead yet,” he confirmed, adding in a soft murmur, “and neither am I. What’s your name, darlin’?”

“Mária Katarina Harony,” she said, coming closer. “Americans call me Kate.”

He rose and brought her hand to his lips. “John Holliday,” he told her. “Miss Kate, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Two hours later, up by almost a grand, he gathered his money. Eyes on Kate, who had stuck around, John Henry addressed the table. “ Tempus fugit , gentlemen, and I believe I have found a better use of my time.”

What force brought them together? Dumb luck, the Fates, or Fortune’s whim? All John Henry knew was that he was a little less lonely after he met Kate, not quite so starved for conversation in a land that seemed to him peopled by illiterate barbarians. In a voice sanded down by cigarettes and whiskey, Kate spoke excellent French and Spanish as well as her native Magyar and German, all in addition to the crude but fluent bordello English she had learned in adolescence.

And she could quote the classics in Latin and in Greek.

“Doc, what’s half of three hundred and fifty thousand?” she asked over breakfast a few days later.

From the start she called him Doc, as though that were his Christian name. Soon others did the same. He found he didn’t mind.

“A hundred seventy-five thousand,” he told her. “Why?”

“What’s seven times a hundred and seventy-five thousand?”

Frowning, he made the calculation. “A million and a quarter. Why?”

“What’s eight times a hundred and seventy-five thousand?”

“A million four,” he said. “Will we be movin’ on to spellin’ next?”

“Dodge City expects three hundred and fifty thousand head of cattle this season,” she said, tapping the newspaper spread out before her on the table. “Seven dollars a heifer, eight for a steer …” She looked up. “How much is that, total?”

“Two million, six hundred and fifty thousand,” he said. “ Why? ”

Those turquoise eyes were half-closed now in dreamy speculation. “Two million, six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in five months’ time … We should move to Dodge,” she decided.

We? he thought.

“Kansas?” he said, as though she were mad and that settled it.

“That’s where the money is.”

“Suit yourself,” he told her, “but I am not goin’ to Kansas.”

“ Sera in fondo parsimonia ,” she warned.

Seneca! he thought. Thrift awaits at the bottom of an empty purse.

Her Latin was always a treat.

“This town’s played out,” she told him on the way back to their hotel room, a few weeks after they met. They had already separated twice by then; Kate could be hell to live with, but they were good together, too. “You didn’t win nothing last night.”

“I did all right,” he objected.

He’d cleared almost $400 at the game. That was more than most men made in a year, but most men didn’t have his expenses. Kate did not present herself as tastefully as she might have; that reflected on him. He’d bought a new wardrobe for her just before they left the city.

Kate was genuinely mystified by his reluctance to try Kansas. “Fort Griffin is even worse than Dallas!” she cried. “Doc, why are we wasting time in a dump like this? You could be pulling in thousands in Dodge!”

“No, and that’s final,” he muttered. He wasn’t even sure why he didn’t want to go. He just didn’t like being pushed.

Then a few days later, Kate’s enthusiasm for Dodge was endorsed during a chance meeting in a Fort Griffin saloon with a deputy federal marshal named Wyatt Earp.

With their brief conversation concluded, John Henry rose carefully and hobbled outside, leaning on his stick. For a good long while, he stared at the featureless, scrubby desolation around him.

Kansas can’t be worse than this, he thought.

In the spring of 1878, John Henry Holliday sent word to his cousin Robert, informing him of another change of address.

Thanks to your brother George, my health and spirits are considerably improved. I have made inquiries about opening a practice in Dodge City, Kansas. The town appears to have escaped the worst of the Depression and is prosperous now. In any case, I believe I have enjoyed about as much of Texas as I can stand. Give my love to your parents, and to George and to Sophie Walton. Tell Martha Anne I will write as soon as I get to Dodge .

YOUR COUSIN JOHN HENRY

As far as Wyatt Earp knew, it was not illegal to beat a horse.

In the past few years, he’d worked as a part-time policeman in a string of Kansas cow towns. Each time he was sworn in, he made an effort to study the ordinances he was supposed to enforce, but he wasn’t much of a reader. In Ellsworth, he asked a lawyer for some help. “Wyatt,” the man told him, “the entire criminal code of the State of Kansas boils down to four words. Don’t kill the customers.”

Most of the time, it seemed sensible to keep things just that simple.

It was, after all, a long way from the cattle roundups in south Texas to the railheads of Kansas. There were dozens of ways for a cowboy to prove his mortality before he got that far. He could be trampled in a stampede or get himself gored by a cranky longhorn. He could be rolled by a spooked horse or break his neck falling off one. He could get snakebit. He could drown crossing a river. He could die of ptomaine poisoning or bloody flux. A cut could go bad. Sometimes that’s all it took.