DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by… no, wait, scratch that. This story is partially based on actual historical figures and events, and partially based on our own hours of twisted fantasies produced by seeing Tombstone one too many times. No money is being made and no offense is intended.
Posted By: Elspethdixon and Pixyofthestyx
Ships: The list goes on and on, but only Doc Holliday/Kate Elder appears in this chapter.
Warnings: This instalment of Gunslinger contains profanity, drinking, and violence. It does not contain hot sex. Sorry.
Gunslinger: Dodge City
Part One: Frontier Marshal.
When six men hold up a train just outside of town, it tends to make people nervous, and nervous people, as Marshal Bat Masterson was fond of pointing out, tended to be less peaceable then relaxed ones. Therefore, it was incumbent upon Dodge City's thinly-stretched peacekeeping force to sally forth and round up the bandits. Also, it was more interesting than enforcing gambling ordinances and corralling troublesome drunks.
Of course, they hadn't managed to lay hold of all of the bandits at once. That would have been too easy. There always had to be one who managed to get away.
Naturally, as one of the newest of Dodge City's collection of lawmen, Wyatt was the one chosen to go looking for Dirty Dave Rudabaugh. Rudabaugh ( not Rutabaga, as Morgan and Bat insisted upon calling him), was the last member of the group of train robbers remaining at liberty. He had disappeared several days ago into the vast expanse of the frontier. God alone knew where.
Wyatt certainly didn't know where. He had tracked Rutabaga (Christ, now they had him doing it!) to a small town in the Texas panhandle, but there, the trail had gone cold. No one in town seemed to remember speaking to him, seeing him, or even hearing about him, save for one man in the livery stable who remembered him riding in. Unfortunately, that was about the only thing the livery man remembered. He couldn't even tell Wyatt which way Rudabaugh had turned when he left the stable.
The bartender at the Cosmopolitan Saloon was even less helpful. "Rudabaugh? Dave Rudabaugh? No, no, I don't think there's any as goes by that here. Tall man, was he?"
"No." Wyatt shook his head. "More average-sized. Balding a bit." He gestured at the top of his own, thankfully not balding, head in illustration. "Wears a brown Stetson. Or he was when he and his buddies robbed that train up in Edwards County."
"Edwards?" The bartender asked. The man's own reddish-brown hair, Wyatt noticed, was rather thin, and his attempt to disguise this by brushing it sideways across the top of his head was something less then successful. "You're a long ways outta your jurisdiction, Mister… what did you say your name was?"
"Earp," Wyatt repeated, for what was at least the third time. "Wyatt Earp. I'm a town marshal in Dodge City?" He was starting to doubt that this man could even remember the names and faces of his regular customers, let alone a passing stranger like Rudabaugh.
"Ain't that way over in Kansas?"
"Yes. The same place as Edwards County," Wyatt said as calmly as he could. "Are you sure you sure haven't seen Rudabaugh? It would only have been a day or so ago."
"Listen, Mr. Earp." The bartender was beginning to sound annoyed. Wyatt sympathized. "I serve maybe twenty, thirty people a day. I can't be expected to remember every cowhand or farmer that comes through here. You might try the saloon across the street. Shanssey over there sees less business than I do."
Considering the state of the Cosmopolitan, which was nearly empty except for a few dust-covered cattle drovers at the end of the bar and a desultory poker game going on in the back corner, Shanssey's place must be in desperate straights indeed. Of course, it was the middle of the day. Wyatt supposed things might liven up a bit after dark.
"Have you tried the bath house?" the bartender asked, clearly trying to be at least somewhat helpful. "There's some men like to get clean after they come in from a long ride. Maybe he went there before going to Shanssey's."
"I don't think so," Wyatt said. "I've seen Rudabaugh. Smelled him, too." He pushed a few coins across the bar, even though he hadn't gotten what he'd come for, and walked out through the Cosmopolitan's batwing doors to look for Shanssey's.
He didn't have to look far. Considering that one could pretty much see from one end of town clear to the other, he hadn't really expected to, but Shanssey's establishment turned out to be conveniently located right across the street from his rival.
Shanssey's was a bit more crowded than the Cosmopolitan, with a row of patrons lining the polished oak bar. At one table near the front, a dark-haired woman whose dress showed off her ample charms to considerable advantage was entertaining a pair of cowhands. Both looked slightly cleaner than the average drover, and were obviously competing for the lady's attentions.
Shanssey himself was a short, weedy-looking man with impressively curled dark hair and a snub nose. When Wyatt stepped up to the bar, he set down the mug he was cleaning and hurried over, wash rag still in his hand. Wyatt nodded amiably at him, and Shanssey responded with a cheerful grin.
"Can I get ya something?"
"A beer. Whatever you've got on stock." Perhaps ordering something would help jog the man's memory.
"Coming right up." Shanssey reclaimed the freshly cleaned mug and filled it from one of the barrels stacked behind the bar. "I don't think I've seen you around before. You just get in today?"
"Yeah." Wyatt picked up the mug of beer and took a brief sip. It wasn't bad, though the brew served at the Long Branch saloon, back in Dodge, was better. "I'm a town marshal out of Dodge City. I'm looking for a man called Dave Rudabaugh. Medium height, kind of balding a bit. He and some friends of his robbed a train back in Kansas."
"Don't know about Rudabaugh, but we did have a man calling himself Dave come through last night. He played a few hands with Dr. Holliday. Lost a fair amount of money for a trailhand, now I think of it. They usually only have that much cash to blow after the big cattle drives come through in the spring."
"Where might I find this Holliday?"
"Oh, you don't want go looking for him," one of the men at the bar volunteered. "He's bad news. They say he shot a man up in Oklahoma. Or maybe it was New Mexico. I forget."
"I heard it was two men, down in East Texas," another drinker, clearly more inebriated than the first, spoke up. He gestured expansively with his mug, leaving a trail of spilled beer on the bar. "Shot 'em both over a game of poker and then sat back down to finish his drink. He's deadly on the draw, faster than a snake."
"And just how would you be knowing that?' Shanssey asked. "Have you ever seen him shoot anybody?" He swiped at the spilled beer with his wash rag. "Doc's got a room here, but you can find him playing poker at the Cosmopolitan right now. If he's not there after all, come back and talk to Katie over there." He nodded towards the dark-haired woman, who was currently lounging on the knee of one of her admirers, to his companion's obvious jealousy. "She keeps company with him."
"Right. What's this Doc fellow look like?" Wyatt asked. It was possible that, if he really was a killer, talking to this Holliday might cause more trouble than it was worth. Many men with blood on their hands didn't take kindly to lawmen, especially if they were fleeing a murder charge in Oklahoma.
"Skinny little bastard with a reb accent." The drinker who had spoken first threw his two cents in again. "S'pposed to be a surgeon or something."
"Dr. Holliday is a dentist," Shanssey corrected him. "He's maybe a little shorter than you," he added, gesturing up at Wyatt's six-foot-plus frame. "Thin, with longish, sandy-colored hair. Used to have a mustache, 'til Kate shaved it off."
"Right here in the bar room, when he was passed out, day before last," the drunk man said. "Though he was going to kill her when he come to."
"Sounds like he walks around killing people everywhere," Wyatt commented.
"Yeah." The drunk nodded. "He's a cold-blooded sonuvabitch. Kill you as soon as look at you. You here to arrest him for something?"
"Not yet," Wyatt said, "but the day's still young."
He paid Shanssey for the beer and headed for the door, leaving the still mostly-full mug behind him on the bar.
As he stepped out into the street, Wyatt fished in his coat pocket for the marshal's badge Bat had handed over to him the week before. It was new enough to still be untarnished, and sparkled brightly in the afternoon sun as he pinned it to his lapel. Maybe now the bartender would be able to remember where Kansas was.
This time, the Cosmopolitan was even more sparsely populated than before. The poker game in the corner had dwindled down to two people, one of them a portly man in a bowler hat who clearly wasn't Holliday. Which made the sickly-looking one with the long, blond hair… Why did the ones with the most vicious reputations always look so harmless? Hardened killers really ought to wear a brand or something.
Wyatt strolled slowly to the back of the saloon, doing his best to avoid looking like a lawman there to arrest somebody for a murder back in East Texas. Or Oklahoma. Or New Mexico. Or wherever.
The man in the bowler, who wore the hat with considerably less panache than Bat Masterson did, took one look at Wyatt walking towards him and fled, leaving cards, whisky glass, and money behind on the table.
Holliday continued to lounge in his chair, glaring at Wyatt with bloodshot blue eyes. "You, sir, have interrupted my poker game." His voice was husky, slightly hoarse, with a pronounced Southern accent. Holliday leaned forward and raked the bowler-hatted man's abandoned cash toward himself with one bony hand. "Did you want something, or have you come here purely to irritate me?"
Something told Wyatt that this was going to be a very long conversation. He righted the departed man's fallen chair and sat down, watching as Holliday gathered his own and his erstwhile opponent's money into a neat little pile. "I could make myself irritating. I hear you've killed lots of men, or maybe just one man in a lot of places. You sound like the sort of person a lawman ought to be interested in. But as it happens, I'm interested in the character you played poker with last night."
"Which one?" Holliday drawled, raising his eyebrows slightly as if to indicate utter contempt for Wyatt's intelligence. "I play poker with a lot of people. It's what you might call my trade." He tapped the stack of printed greenbacks against the table to line the edges up and tucked the money inside his coat.
Wyatt launched into the description once more. By the time he'd gotten to "balding," Holliday was smirking.
"I might have played a hand or so with someone answering that description. Maybe." He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, getting it clear of his face. It was a disconcertingly feminine gesture. "However, I make it a point not to converse with lawmen. If that's all?" Clearly, Wyatt was now expected to leave.
Wyatt leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "There's this thing called 'obstructing justice,' Dr. Holliday. An educated fellow like you might of heard of it."
"You seem to have me at a disadvantage when it comes to names." He waved a hand at Wyatt's chair. "Why don't you sit down and introduce yourself."
Somehow, even though the man was clearly doing his level best to be annoying, Holliday managed to make Wyatt feel as if he were the one being rude. "Wyatt Earp," he said. "Deputy Town Marshal for Dodge City."
"I think I've heard of you. Didn't you used to be a marshal up in Wichita?" As he spoke, Holliday picked up the half empty bottle of whisky that rested by his elbow and poured himself a glass. He didn't offer Wyatt any.
Wyatt nodded, but didn't volunteer any more information. Holliday, after all, was the one who was supposed to be answering the questions.
After a long moment of silence, which Wyatt pointedly did not break, Holliday downed the glass of whiskey—coughing slightly at strength of it—and nodded at Wyatt, miming tipping a hat as if the two of them had just run into one another on the street. "Dr. John Henry Holliday. Most folks just call me Doc."
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Doc," Wyatt said, reaching an arm out and taking hold of the bottle of whiskey. He leaned back in his chair, holding the bottle at a slant to read the label. "Let me guess, you didn't buy this here?"
"However could you tell?" Holliday was imitating Wyatt, right down to the arm draped over the back of his chair. Somehow, he managed to make the pose mocking. "The good bartender here adds rattlesnake venom to his liquor for that extra kick. I'm rather fond of my eyesight." He gestured negligently at the bottle in Wyatt's hand. "May I have that back, please?"
"There anything you have to tell me about Dave Rudabaugh?"
"Rudabaugh?" Holliday parroted. "I believe I remember him. Unwashed cowhand with deep pockets?" He smirked slightly, though his eyes still followed the whiskey bottle, which Wyatt was now twirling slowly back and forth through his fingers. "I assume his crime is larger than mere lack of hygiene?"
"He robbed a train in Kansas."
"That would explain how someone of his poker playing abilities got his hands on that much cash. It was clear he hadn't won it at cards."
Holliday opened his mouth to say something else, but whatever it was was lost as the distinctive sound of breaking glass came from the street outside.
"You low-down sonuvabitch!"
Wyatt was all ready on his feet and heading for the door, whiskey bottle still in his right hand. He heard Holliday climbing to his feet behind him, but ignored the noise, his attention already focused on the fight outside.
"Bastard! I'll kill you fer that !" the more bedraggled of the two combatants was howling. Clearly, he had been the one to take a trip through Shanssey's front window. He launched himself at his opponent, throwing a punch to the side of his jaw.
The other man dodged the punch and grabbed him around the waist, trying to wrestle him to the ground without noticeable success. "She's mine!" he snarled. "I already paid her."
"Where are you going?" Holliday demanded. He grabbed Wyatt by the elbow, halting him just outside the Cosmopolitan's doors.
Wyatt yanked his arm free without breaking stride. "Stay here," he said. He didn't bother looking back to see whether Holliday obeyed. The two trailhands from Shanssey's saloon were brawling in the middle of the street, while Shanssey himself stood on the sidewalk, watching silently. Kate leaned against the doorframe behind him, looking bored.
Wyatt reached the two fighters in three long strides, reaching out and latching on to the nearest man's shoulder with his left hand. He spun the man around, ducking the fist thrown at his face, and brought Holliday's whiskey bottle down neatly against the back of his head.
The man went down in a shower of whiskey and broken glass. His opponent drew back a foot to kick him and then, seeing the jagged-edged neck of the bottle still clutched in Wyatt's hand, thought better of it. He lowered his foot and his fists and stood quietly, all the fight gone out of him.
"What the hell's going on here?" Wyatt asked, looking up to where Shanssey stood in the shade of the saloon's overhanging roof.
"The lads had a disagreement-" Shanssey started to explain.
"That was mine," Holliday interrupted, voice rising nearly an octave in aggrieved protest. He followed Wyatt across the street, and was now standing immediately behind him, glaring up at him with his hands fisted at his sides. "It was very expensive."
"Oh, sorry." Wyatt held the broken remnants of the bottleneck out toward Holliday. "Do you want it back?"
For one long moment, he was sure the other man was going to hit him. Holliday had gone rigid, eyes narrowed. Somehow, despite being a good six inches shorter and at least sixty pounds lighter than Wyatt, he managed to look intimidating. Until his lips curved slowly upwards into small smile. "No, he needed the bath anyway." Holliday glanced down to where Wyatt's victim sprawled amidst a scattering of glass shards, blood and whiskey dripping down his face. "Just for the record," he told the man, "she's mine."
Kate chose that moment to saunter slowly over, coming to stand next to Holliday. She placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on his elbow, draping herself against his side. "I told you I had company tonight," she said. She had a slight foreign accent, something Wyatt couldn't place.
"Bitch," the fallen man spat, one hand pressed to the back of his head.
Holliday kicked him. He turned back to Wyatt. "Well then, where were we?"
"You were telling me how Rudabaugh can't play poker," Wyatt said.
"Ah yes." Holliday gestured with his free hand—the one not currently occupied with Kate—at the doorway of Shanssey's. "What do you say we continue this conversation indoors?"
As the three of them stepped up onto the sidewalk and entered the saloon, Wyatt caught sight of the town's sheriff, being led down the street by one of the men Wyatt had spoken to in Shanssey's earlier. Satisfied that things were being taken care of, Wyatt followed Holliday and Kate to a table in the back corner. Like many gamblers and gunfighters, Holliday seemed to prefer sitting with his back against a wall.
"Your train robber didn't seem too worried about being caught." Holliday paused, standing slightly bent over with one hand on the back of a chair.
"What makes you say that?" Wyatt asked.
Instead of answering, Holliday began coughing, a deep, wracking cough that had him nearly doubled over, one arm wrapped around his chest.
"Are you all right?"
Holliday nodded, still coughing, and waved a hand in Wyatt's direction, indicating that he was fine and Wyatt should sit down and leave him alone. Kate laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment and headed for the bar, leaving the gambler to collapse, wheezing, into his seat.
"If Rudabaugh felt he had time to spend half the night losing money to me, he wasn't too concerned about pursuit," Holliday said, with a last, half-muffled cough. "He certainly wasn't worried about flashing money around. Like your friend in the street, he attempted buy Kate's favors. She turned out to be more expensive than he'd assumed, and he went away to sulk."
"You know, technically, that money belongs to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe," Wyatt said.
"A corrupt and despotic example of Yankee capitalism. And technically, that whiskey bottle belonged to me."
"Yeah, thanks for the loan."
Holliday smiled slightly, and returned to the subject of Rudabaugh. "He said something about riding south, but he didn't say where to." As he spoke, Kate came back to the table, a glass of whiskey in each hand. She set one down on the table and handed the other to Holliday, who took it without looking and drained it in one swallow. "You might be able to catch him if you're lucky."
"Thanks." Wyatt stood, offering his chair to Kate, and extended his hand to Holliday. Holliday looked at it for a second, but didn't take it.
"I don't shake hands," he said. Holliday saluted Wyatt with the empty shot glass. "Happy hunting."
Wyatt grinned. "If you ever come through Dodge, I'll buy you a new bottle of whiskey."
"Bourbon would be better."
"We'll see." Wyatt nodded at Holliday, put his hat back on, and headed for the door. There might still be enough daylight left to catch Rudabaugh on the road.
Nearly a week later, Wyatt, dusty and travel sore, rode back into Dodge, still Rudabaugh-less. His brothers were waiting for him in the marshal's office that formed the front half of the town jail. Well, Virgil was waiting. Morgan was occupied with Dolores Conklin, the grocer's wife.
"The dreadful creature barks and howls all night long. Surely, there must be some law forbidding people to keep loud dogs!" She had Morgan cornered behind the room's only desk, and was waving one finger at him threateningly. "I insist that you do something immediately."
"Hey, Wyatt." Virgil nodded at him from his position by the cell doors, safely out of Mrs. Conklin's range. "How was your trip?"
"I tracked Rudabaugh down into Texas, but I lost the trail a couple days across the state line," Wyatt said, looking at the floor. He hated when one of them got away, especially when he'd invested so much time and effort in trying to bring them in.
"Ma'am, really, I can't arrest him for that," Morgan protested. "People don't have much of a say in how loud their dogs bark."
Virgil ignored Mrs. Conklin's indignant response with the ease of considerable practice. "That's where Bat caught up with him," he said, gesturing at a man huddled under a blanket in the cell farthest from the door. "He brought him in yesterday."
Wyatt suppressed the urge to walk over to Rudabaugh's cell and beat his head repeatedly against the bars. Or maybe just beat Rudabaugh. "I spent over a week looking for him in every flyspeck of a town between here and the Texas panhandle," he said.
"Yes, I know. Sorry about that, Wyatt." Virgil shrugged. "We could have used you here, too." He nodded toward the desk, where Morgan was still attempting to placate Mrs. Conklin. Wyatt was sure that beneath his mustache, Virgil was smiling ever so slightly.
"Realty, Deputy, I don't know what this town pays you for." Mrs. Conklin drew herself up to her full height, somehow managing to loom over Morgan even though he was nearly as tall as Wyatt.
"Virge, if you need me for anything, I'll be in the saloon." Wyatt ducked out of the jail, careful to give Mrs. Conklin a wide berth. As he walked down the street toward the Long Branch saloon, he could hear her voice drifting out of the jail behind him.
"Rest assured, my husband will be hearing about this!"
The Long Branch was like a cheerful, brightly lit oasis after the dusty, dimly lit saloons of Texas. The walls were covered with paintings and murals, including Wyatt's personal favorite, a mostly nude woman reclining on a sofa—or maybe it was a chariot, he had never been entirely sure—being pulled though the air by two horses. Bat called her Stella.
Damn Bat anyway. Wyatt had been all over hell's half acre looking for Rudabaugh, and the way things had turned out, he might as well have stayed home and saved himself the trouble.
Wyatt had seated himself at the bar and was just beginning to work himself into a really good sulk when he heard someone coming up behind him.
"I believe, sir," said a vaguely familiar voice, "that you owe me a bottle of bourbon."
"It was whiskey," Wyatt replied. He turned and found Doc Holliday standing just behind his bar stool, smiling innocently as if it were perfectly natural for him to be standing in the middle of the Long Branch in Dodge City, Kansas, instead of back in Texas where Wyatt had left him. He was wearing the same green brocade waistcoat he had had on last week, and his long, blond hair was tied back out of his face with what look suspiciously like a ribbon. There was an ivory handled revolver hanging from a shoulder holster on his left side. It looked well used.
"Sit down, Doc," Wyatt said, waving at the bar stool next to him. "I'll buy you a drink."
The Long Branch saloon really existed, as did that painting. There was no way we could leave something like that out. Look at it this way—at least the horses weren't unicorns. No, the Long Branch saloon was not run by Miss Kitty. We're sorry. (Marshal Dillon doesn't exist either).
Authors' note: This story, co-written by myself and my friend and fellow writer Rosa/pixyofthestyx, is the first segment of the cracked-out-Western-soap-opera-anime-from-hell fic spawned by watching Tombstone, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Magnificent Seven, and a large selection of anime (including Peacemaker Kurogane) one time too often. Tombstone, we decided, would make a wonderful anime. Because Kate could have gigantic breasts, Wyatt's coat could billow dramatically every time something important was happening, and Doc would have long, pretty hair, as dying of consumption automatically makes you the resident angsty bishonen.
And since even the historical record seems determined to lead us further and further down the path to damnation by being slashy, there would have to be slash. Unfortunately, since neither of us can write sex, it would only be implied. It would, however, be implied with all of the subtlety that Gunfight at the O.K. Corral uses, which is to say, none at all.
Talking turned into obsessing. Obsessing led to extensive amounts of historical research. Research led to writing. We're sorry. We're very, very sorry.