Mary Russell - Doc

A whispered word. A phrase written on paper and slipped into a waiting hand. A place chosen, the time agreed upon. Excuses found, reasons given. Illicit hours stolen from duties and obligations.

She was afraid, at first. Eli’s horse was familiar. Alice’s movements were noted. After a time, however, it seemed plain to them that Bob must have known.

“He knows, and he doesn’t care,” Alice said.

There was in her voice both bitterness and elation.

“You’re going to need law,” Bat Masterson insisted. “First off, there’s going to be enough money at that table to buy a small railway. No sense tempting thieves. Second, Holliday is dangerous as hell, but I can handle him.”

Third, Eli Grier thought, the house rakes off a percentage and if the game’s in the Lone Star, Sheriff Masterson is half the house.

As the date for the game drew closer, Reasons First and Second receded in significance, leaving Reason Third in high relief. There would be no cash at the table: chips only, for this was to be a gentleman’s game, with all players presumed good for their losses the next day. That was lucky, since it eliminated Eli’s need to acquire money for his stake. Yes, there were rumors about the dentist—

Jesus, what was his name again? Eli was awful with names. He had to be introduced three or four times before a name got a grip—yet another failing that had annoyed Eli’s old man, who always bragged he never forgot a face or a name.

Anyway, the dentist was a gentleman from Atlanta, so Eli wasn’t worried by Sheriff Masterson’s warnings. The Grier and Cook Carriage Company had done business with Georgia’s upper crust for decades. Eli himself had spent nearly two years in Atlanta after the war, serving as liaison between the army’s general staff and that smoldering city’s impoverished aristocrats. He was familiar with the breed, and rather fond of it.

Most of Sherman’s army had truly hated Georgians—not just for the savage cruelty of slavery and for their antebellum arrogance but for the stubborn defense the state militia persisted in presenting long past the point when there was a snowball’s chance in hell that they wouldn’t be crushed. Every time Joe Johnston pulled back, dug in, and made yet another attempt to delay the inevitable, Sherman’s men felt as though they were being forced to murder ragged skinny veterans, and gray-haired old men, and thin-faced fourteen-year-old cadets from some goddam military school. “What in hell’s it gonna take to make them bastards quit?” That was the question on every Yankee tongue, and the answer was this. Nothing short of the cold, deliberate destruction of everything that stood or grew or moved between Chattanooga and Savannah.

If anything, the victors’ hatred intensified after the war, for if Georgians had resisted every step toward their defeat and lost everything they’d fought for, if they starved and struggled and scratched for a living with bare white hands in scorched red earth in the years that followed their surrender, there remained to them one possession that could not be stolen, destroyed, or set alight: an unyielding and unassailable pride that had not just survived but deepened in the aftermath of conquest.

It was infuriating, the insolent malevolence in eyes that stared coldly above slight smiles. Go ahead , those smiles said. Take everything of value. Burn the rest. I am still the better man .

Unlike his brother officers, Eli understood the cool, correct courtesy and appreciated the grave, impenetrable mockery. Once, he’d thanked an Atlantan for some small deference and had been informed, with exquisite politesse , “A gentleman is judged by the way he treats his inferiors, sir.”

The remark was, he thought, the most perfect expression of Southern hauteur he’d ever encountered. It aroused his admiration as did a well-bred horse or a fine oil painting, though most men wouldn’t have gotten the joke and the rest would have been insulted.

For all his ferocity in battle, Eli Grier never took offense. Hell, nothing said to him during two years in Atlanta came close to what he used to hear at any given breakfast with his father. Southern tempers could flare to killing heights in an instant, but the anger burned out just as quickly. There was something almost sexual about that explosive release of male violence, and you did well to be aware of murderous rage lurking beneath polished gentility. In Eli’s experience, however, if you were circumspect and capable of apology, you’d get along with Southerners just fine.

Sitting down at the table in the Lone Star Dance Hall and Saloon that night in late September, Elijah Garrett Grier was actually looking forward to sharing an evening with such a gentleman. At first the dentist did not disappoint. Knife-thin and pasty-pale, he had Georgia’s familiar blurred and lazy accent and its casual, careless courtesy, though it was immediately apparent that he was consumptive and in considerable misery, given the way he dosed himself from a bottle delivered, without his asking, to his elbow.

“I offered Sheriff Masterson all my custom if only he and his partner were to rename the Lone Star,” the dentist said with a charming, crooked grin. “I should dearly like to write home and tell my kin that I only drink in Moderation.”

Eli smiled. He felt sorry for the man but certainly did not fear him. They chatted amiably, waiting for the others to arrive. It came as something of a surprise to Eli that they had met earlier that year. Eli begged pardon and confessed his debility, and was assured that no offense had been taken. It was merely a brief encounter at the Green Front back in May, the dentist told him between bouts of coughing. They had exchanged a few remarks about Roxana. No reason to recall the conversation now.

The time passed pleasantly until Bob Wright showed up. It was Bob, businesslike, who made introductions all around when the two cattlemen arrived. With self-deprecating humor, Eli told the newcomers that the odds were twenty to one that he’d be able to remember their names, admitting that he was a special kind of idiot about such things. For some reason, however, John Holliday’s name finally stuck. Maybe it was the irony of a man so sick being called Doc.

The game began around midnight amid noisy conversation and raucous laughter. Bat’s prophecy of trouble had attracted a number of spectators to the Lone Star that evening, and they drank in gleeful anticipation of the local outbreak of hell rumored to be imminent. Unfortunately for the Lone Star’s profit, the first hours of play were disappointingly quiet. Despite the stakes, most folks drifted away to seek their entertainment elsewhere. Interest in the table was confined to the men sitting around it and to the Hungarian whore who watched the action with unwavering attention—not surprising, given the side bet she and Eli Grier had.

When Eli realized that Kate was Holliday’s woman, there was a moment of unease before he lost all respect for a man who probably pimped her and certainly shared her. By that point in the game, it was apparent that Doc Holliday was neither a card sharp nor the ferocious exemplar of Southern spleen that Bat Masterson had promised. The Georgian was a decent player, but he’d been drunk when he sat down and he continued to drink as the evening progressed. Eli took pride in gambling sober and considered that the real threat was one of the cattlemen. Johnson. Or was it Johansen? Jensen, maybe. Dammit, something with a J …

And soon it didn’t matter, for the cards loved Elijah Garrett Grier that night. Early on, he drew two, and filled a ten-high straight that would pay off two outstanding loans. Half an hour later, he held a pair of queens, drew three, and was astonished to find himself holding a very timely full house.