Mary Russell - Doc

This is fever, she decided. Hoping he’d lose interest if she delayed the game, she threw up her hands. “All right! Whatever you say, but I need time to set it up.”

“Get Bob Wright, too.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You ain’t serious,” she scoffed.

Slate blue eyes rose, humorless and unblinking.

“Doc,” she said cautiously, “Bob Wright’s good. You can’t play him! Hell, you shouldn’t play at all, not like this …”

As his rebuttal he held out a handkerchief streaked with bright arterial red. When he spoke, his voice was soft and empty of drama. “ ’S now or never, darlin’.”

The argument went on, but nothing Kate said made a difference, for Doc’s logic was impeccable if unspoken. It was his dispassionate clinical judgment that he would not live to see his twenty-seventh Christmas. Why hold back? What was left to him but one last grand gesture?

On the fifth of September 1878, it came down to this. Kate had made him a promise. He held her to it.

Later she would rage at him, at his stupidity and arrogance and pride. She would swear that if she’d known what he intended, she never would have agreed to help. “Too late now” was all he’d say, but he would say it to her back, as she left him.

“I’m putting a game together,” Kate told Elijah Garrett Grier in mid-September. “Stud poker. Twenty-dollar ante. No limit. You in?”

Naturally, he hesitated, for he simply didn’t trust her. Twice that summer, Eli had complained to Bessie Earp about the Hungarian hooker, but Bessie only shrugged and looked at her husband.

“Katie runs her own business,” James told the captain. “The house just takes a cut for laundry and the room.” Kate came and went whenever she pleased, James explained, and did what she liked with whoever caught her eye. “My opinion?” James offered. “That’s what customers like about her.”

Maybe so, for she wasn’t that pretty, and she sure as hell didn’t flatter a man. Whatever the reason, Eli Grier wanted her, but the bitch just toyed with him. Once, back in July, when he thought the deal was made, she fixed him with that flat-eyed stare of hers. Breasts half-exposed by negligent lace, she leaned toward him with a feral grin, letting him breathe in her perfume and her musk, daring him to touch her. He reached out and as his fingers grazed that creamy flesh, he felt the barrel of a Deringer .36 press against the ribs above his heart.

Her voice was husky, foreign, amused. “Let’s see your cash,” she whispered. “For you? I cost a grand.”

Then, laughing, she swirled away, silk rustling, making him watch, infuriated, as she picked another man. “For you?” she cried breezily. “Five bucks!” And off she went, not even glancing over her soft, white shoulder as she led the dazzled Texan up quiet, carpeted stairs.

“What’s the matter?” she taunted Eli now. “Game too rich for you?”

It was, and he suspected that she knew it. Which is exactly why Elijah Grier said, “How about a side bet? I double my money, you’re mine for a night.”

“And what do I get if you lose?” she asked, delighted.

He’d left himself no path of retreat. “A grand,” he said.

No woman was worth so much, but night after night, he had imagined it. What would you get from her for a thousand dollars? What could you do to her, for a thousand dollars?

“Double that,” she dared.

“You’re on,” he said with the careless bravado that had earned him three combat commendations and two field promotions before he was twenty-three.

Kate sat back, sprawled on Bessie’s upholstery. Arms flung over the crest of a settee, breasts loose and lifted, she actually seemed impressed for a moment. Then, leaning toward him, she reached over to pat his thigh sympathetically and ran her hand slowly upward.

“Tell you what,” she offered, voice low. “I’ll go home with the winner. If that’s you?” She shrugged. “But if it’s not?” She tightened her grip on him until he stopped breathing. “You’ll owe me two grand.”

Getting Grier was easy. So was finding a couple of cattlemen to fill out the table. The invitation to Bob Wright required something different.

“Doc wants to play you,” Kate told him. “Five-card stud. No limit. Interested?”

Unbuttoning his shirt, Bob gave her one of his Aw, shucks looks. “Oh, I’m not much of a card player.”

She laughed appreciatively, and her knowing skepticism was rewarded by his sly smile when she came over to pull the shirt down off his shoulders.

“Anyways,” he said, “from what I hear, Doc Holliday’s too good for me.”

“Don’t be so sure!” She sounded sincere because she was. “Doc don’t get much real competition. It’s all drunks and fools. He’s tired of being sick, and he’s bored. He wants a real game. That army captain with the fancy horse? He’s in. Doc’s got some kinda beef with him.”

Bob frowned. “Eli Grier? He’s courting my daughter.”

Kate blinked, then smiled briefly. Later, Bob would remember that smile and the faint indulgent pity it signified.

“That’s the one,” she said. “I lined up a couple of other players, but Doc asked for you, special.”

Most men looked better dressed; Bob was the exception, better built than you’d guess when you saw him on the street. Sure of himself in bed, and with good reason. First time around, he tried to jew her fee down. Kate told him to go to hell. “Awright,” he offered, “double or nothing—if I can’t make you come.” To her surprise, he won the bet. He’d been one of her regulars ever since. He paid more often than not, but either way, Kate found it satisfying to see that mask of tame, inoffensive harmlessness drop like a magician’s silk scarf once the bedroom door was closed.

Doc had been too damn sick to be much use to her lately; tonight, Kate found it easy to let Bob get past the professional distance she normally maintained. Which is why, laughing and out of breath, she meant it when she told him, “Your wife is a lucky woman.” She almost regretted slipping the knife in, but Doc had insisted. “First you,” she said. “Now Grier …”

God, he’s good, she thought, watching. Silence was the only tell.

Eyes wide in merry astonishment, she purred, “Oh, Bob! You don’t really think Grier’s interested in your little girl, do you?”

He got up, keeping his back to her. Funny how men thought it was modest to stand that way. She admired the view while he dressed. Good shoulders, broad back. Power in the ass and thighs. Prosperous men generally got fat. Big George Hoover already had. Bat Masterson was getting there. Bob Wright could buy and sell them both, but he still had the body of a young freight driver. Bob had other hungers to feed.

When he’d finished with his string tie, he turned to display the perfect poker face. Mild. Amiable. No threat to anyone.

“Tell me more,” he suggested, “about that poker game.”

God’s honest truth: Elijah Garrett Grier never meant to cuckold Bob Wright. For one thing, Eli Grier truly liked and admired Bob. And you might not think it, but they had a lot in common, though one man was a storekeeper and the other a soldier.

In long, enjoyable conversations, they had come to believe that combat and commerce presented similar challenges and drew on similar talents; the tactical brilliance Elijah Grier displayed in battle had made Bob Wright an astonishingly successful entrepreneur. Others saw risk and danger; they saw openings and opportunities. Others stood stunned in the face of shifting complexity; they cut through to solutions that seemed to arise without thought or effort. Neither was drawn to frontal assaults. Both inclined toward flanking maneuvers. With every story they exchanged, it became clearer that they were a match, each man’s achievements shining a favorable light on the other’s.