“You’ll get mine, too,” Morg said over his shoulder.
Stauber and Charlie and all the others looked to Morg, and nodded. One by one, every man on the Dodge City police force told Dog, “Mine, too,” ready to back Wyatt’s play, even though none of them was sure yet what in hell was going on.
Doc McCarty was kneeling on the dirt by then, examining the bleeding fiddler. Dog came closer and asked, “How bad is he?”
“He’s young,” the doctor said. “He’ll live.”
“Well, then,” Dog said, clapping his hands once. “No harm done!”
Wyatt shook his head mulishly. “There’s got to be one law for everybody, Dog.”
“Yeah, but—Wyatt, he’s—”
“No, sir,” Wyatt insisted. “There can’t be one law for rich Texans and another law for broke Texans, and another law for Negroes, and another one for Chinamen, and squaws, and Irishmen, and whores, and another one for everybody else. I can’t parse it that way, Dog! I am not that smart! There’s got to be one law for everybody, or I can’t do this job. You want my badge or not?”
Dog glanced at Morgan, who acknowledged the look with a shrug and a nod and a sigh: Yeah, I know what you’re thinking …
It was boneheaded and contrary, and maybe someday Wyatt would learn the ways of the world and how to go along with things he couldn’t change, but not today. Today he was going to take that rich kid in or get fired for trying.
That was when Bob Wright—conciliatory and earnest—approached Wyatt to have a quiet word with him, except Dog Kelley stepped between them.
“Tell you what, Wyatt,” Dog said quickly. “We’ll take the kid straight to court and let him pay the fine. Everybody wins.”
“Wyatt, if it’s the arrest fee you’re thinking of,” Bob said, reaching into his own pocket, “let’s see if we can’t work something out—”
“Bad move,” Doc murmured to Eddie.
“Bob, no!” Mayor Kelley moaned. “He don’t mean it, Wyatt. Not like that—”
“Morg,” Wyatt called so everyone in the crowd could hear him. “Arrest this man. He is attempting to bribe an officer of the law.”
“Mr. Wright,” Morgan said, “I’m sorry, but I’m taking you in.”
“F’crissakes, Wyatt,” Dog cried. “Morgan, no!”
“You want my badge, Mayor?” Morg asked, fingers on his star.
Dog threw up his hands in defeat. “This will not end well,” he warned the Earps, but there was nothing more he could say. Bob Wright was standing right there, his face as blank as an egg, malice rising off him like a stink.
The boy on the ground was conscious enough now to respond to the pain in his ear when Wyatt tugged at it. Getting to his feet blearily, Billy Driskill let himself be led to jail, right behind the only man in Dodge almost as rich as his Uncle Jesse.
“Go on, now,” Bat Masterson ordered the crowd. “Show’s over. Break it up.”
Slowly the crowd dispersed, leaving Dog Kelley and China Joe standing together on the street.
Jau Dong-Sing crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, the way any American would. “Wyatt Earp one big damn dumb son a bitch,” he muttered.
“A remark like that is a good way for a Chink to get himself lynched,” Dog warned before he walked away, “but I ain’t gonna tell you that you’re wrong.”
Ringer
Stone-faced and determined to deliver both prisoners to a cell, Wyatt came about halfway to breaking the jaw of a tall, thin, unshaven man standing between him and the jailhouse door. Morg had time to say, “That’s Doc! Don’t hit him!” But something had already made Wyatt pull his fist back. A thoughtfulness, maybe. A look of appraisal that didn’t quite match the man’s coatless shirt and rumpled trousers.
The dentist, too, seemed distracted by events, though sheer force of habit made him say “Afternoon,” to Bob Wright, as though the merchant weren’t being hauled in on a bribery charge.
“It’s after two,” Doc told Wyatt.
Wyatt’s forehead furrowed. “Did I have an appointment today?”
“No! The race! Three o’clock?”
Wyatt glanced at the sun. “Hell. Forgot all about it.”
“Let me ride for you.”
“In the race, you mean?” Wyatt had never seen Doc Holliday ride anything. “You sure?”
“Would I make the offer if I were not capable?” Doc cried. “What does a man have to do to be taken at his word in this town? Do I have to shoot someone? Because I am makin’ a list! Yes, damn you, I am sure!”
“Well, I ain’t,” the Driskill kid mumbled, swaying a bit but watching Doc, who was coughing now. “You don’ look too good, mister.”
“Shut up. Nobody asked you,” Wyatt said, still gripping the kid’s ear. But he was inclined to agree with the boy, and Doc must have seen that.
“I can do this, Wyatt,” the dentist insisted. “It’s a short race.”
“Dick don’t know you, Doc. He’s not an easy horse—”
“Let me try! He won’t finish better if you keep him in the stall,” Doc pointed out. “And he’ll be carryin’ less than he’s used to.”
“Tha’s an a’vantage,” young Driskill agreed. Like anybody gave a shit.
“All right,” Wyatt told Doc finally, not because he thought it was a good idea but because he couldn’t make himself say no to what he saw in the skinny Georgian’s shining eyes. “If you can get him saddled, give it a try.”
Doc nodded and set off for the stable.
“Watch out!” Wyatt called. “He bites!”
Without looking back, Doc raised a hand in acknowledgment.
“Don’t hit him for it!” Wyatt yelled.
Doc turned and stared, motionless, while the crowd moved around him.
“Hell,” Wyatt sighed. He already regretted what he’d just said and expected to be told off for it. “What kinda blankety-blank idiot do you take me for?” Doc would ask him. “Are you sayin’ I’m a mean, stupid, s.o.b. who’d hit a horse for bein’ nervy?”
Instead, what Wyatt saw was the long, slow emergence of something that began in John Henry Holliday’s eyes and lifted the high, flat planes of his cheeks just before his mouth dropped open into the biggest, happiest smile Wyatt had ever seen on that boy’s face.
“I knew you’d say that!” Doc hollered back joyously and, coughing, he disappeared into the crowd.
There are many reasons a horse will bite. In the wild, stallions bite during contests for a harem. Boss mares do so to enforce discipline within a herd. Sometimes it’s just in a horse’s nature to be mouthy, the way a retrieving dog is born with the urge to carry things around. Even a good-tempered saddle horse might snap when startled by an abrupt or careless motion.
“Watch how he holds his head,” young Robert Holliday counseled the first time he took his little cousin to the Fayetteville stable to meet Robert’s new gelding. “See the tail? If you know what you’re lookin’ at, you can read a horse like one of your damn books.”
Standing on an upturned bucket so he could see into the stall, John Henry knew exactly what he was looking at: the homeliest pony he’d laid eyes on by the tender age of eight, and if nature had produced another who could take the title away, he had not seen evidence of the achievement in all the years since.
Snickers the little horse was unkindly named, in recognition of the response his appearance provoked. He