“Animal worth
anything dead?”
“Depends on the
buyer.”
“Could stuff and
stand it in a penny arcade. I seen a mermaid once. Looked like a
monkey and a fish sewed together, but you got to admit, a sight
like that’s worth a penny.”
“At least.” Doc was
rarely reluctant to tell anything to Wyatt, but he hesitated before
he finally said, “Horn’s s’posed to cure most sicknesses.” He
coughed. “Turn the horn into a drinking cup, and it takes the power
out of poison. You can smear its blood on a wound, and the wound’ll
heal right up. Some say its whole body’s magical. You’re s’posed to
eat its liver for something, but I forget what. There’s folks who
say it can make you young again, or live forever, or raise the
dead.”
“Any o’ that
true?”
Doc shrugged. “Three minutes ago, I
would’a’ said it was all proof a lie lives longer than a liar. Now
I’m not so sure.”
“Let’s find out.”
Wyatt drew on the reins. As his horse halted, he dropped to the
ground and pulled his rifle from its boot on his saddle.
Doc said, “Ain’t neither of us
sharpshooters. One miss’d scare it off for good.”
Wyatt paused with the rifle butt at
his shoulder. “You all right, Doc? Ain’t like you to pass on an
opportunity set before you.”
“I do make some note
of the odds, Wyatt. Leastways, when I’m anything like
sober.”
“Mmm. Your old Roman
said they could be killed. There a trick to it?”
Doc considered the answers, and
thought of Kate, and said, “We ain’t got the means.”
“Hell.” Wyatt spoke
with no particular emphasis. “Then there’s no reason not to try
what we got, is there?”
“No.” Doc whipped his
short-barrel Colt from its holster and fired in the general
direction of the unicorn. It seemed to study him with
disappointment while the sound of the shot hung in the hot, clean
air. Then it danced aside as Wyatt’s shot followed Doc’s, and it
tossed its mane and its horn in something uncannily like a laugh
before it skipped back behind the rise.
“Damn it, Doc, if
you’d’a’ waited till we could’a’ both took aim with
rifles—”
“Why, sure, Wyatt. I
reckon I could’a’ taken me a nap, and once you had ever’thing to
your liking, I’d’a’ risen well-rested to shoot ever so nicely, and
we’d now be arguing whether unicorn liver’d taste best by itself or
with a big plate o’ beans.”
Wyatt stared at him, then said
grimly, “With beans,” and slid his rifle back into its
boot.
Doc laughed and coughed and
holstered his Colt. Then he let his surprise show on his face. The
unicorn watched them from the next rise. Wyatt swung back onto his
horse, looked toward the unicorn, then looked toward Doc, who said,
“It sure is pretty.”
He did not expect Wyatt to answer
that. Wyatt did not surprise him. The unicorn studied them as they
rode by. When they had left sight of it, it appeared again on a
further ridge that paralleled their ride.
Wyatt said, “If we could lure it in
close, we’d plug it for sure.”
“Mmm,” Doc said, and
then, “Maybe we should let Ringo live.”
“Eh?”
“Ain’t like he was
one o’ the ones who killed Morg.”
“He stood by ’em. He
planned it with Curly Bill. He was in on the attack on
Virge.”
“That ain’t
proven.”
“Is to my
satisfaction.”
Doc laughed, said, “Hell, Wyatt,
we’d have to kill half of Tombstone to get everyone who stood by
the Clantons,” then coughed.
When he lifted his head again,
Wyatt was watching him like the unicorn had, with cool speculation.
Doc wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. Wyatt
said, “All right.”
“All right,
what?”
“All right, Ringo
don’t need to die. ’Less he insists on it.”
“How so?”
Wyatt smiled. “Like I said. Depends
on him.”
Doc nodded, and they rode on. The
sands stayed a steady white-hot glare, and the sky continued to
leach moisture from their skin and their lungs. The unicorn
accompanied them, always at a distance. Each time it disappeared,
they thought it had abandoned them, but it always appeared again at
a new, improbable vantage where only the most accurate marksman
might take it.
Fred Dodge had said Ringo was on a
drunk and camping in a canyon in the Chiricahuas. Both of these
things turned out to be true. Near a creek in the shade of a
boulder, they found him reading aloud from the Iliad with an empty
bottle and a pair of boots beside him. His out-stretched feet were
wrapped in strips of light cotton. He looked up as they rode near
and switched from Greek to English to say, “Achilles and Patroclus,
welcome.”
“Hell, you are drunk
if you don’t recognize us,” said Wyatt.
“Who you think you’re
playing?” said Doc. “Hardly Odysseus. Poor Hector? Brash Paris? The
accommodating Panderus, perhaps?”
Ringo lifted his right arm from
beside his body to show them his .45. “Anybody I damn well please.
That’s a good one, you two whoremasters calling names.”
Wyatt said, “Doc, I forget. Why’d
you want to warn him?”
“Seemed a fair notion
at the time.” Doc turned to Ringo. “You began the exchange of
pleasantries, my Johnnie-O.”
“Oh, all right, all
right.” Ringo waved the matter away in a broad circle with his
Colt, then rose unsteadily to his feet. “So. To what do I owe the
honor of this visit?”
Wyatt said, “Wells Fargo wants you
dead.”
“Wells Fargo?” Ringo
drew himself erect and stated, precisely and indignantly, “I am a
rustler, not a highwayman.”
“It’s the price of
fame,” Doc said. “A few hold-ups, they ask who’s like to’ve
masterminded ‘em, and your name’s sitting at the top of the
heap.”
Ringo blinked. “So why’d you two
come in talkin’ instead o’ shootin’?”
Wyatt said, “Ask Doc.”
Doc worked his lips and wondered at
the impulse that had brought them under the gunsight of the man
they had hunted. He said simply, “There’s been a lot o’ killin’.
Mind if I water my horse?”
Ringo waved again. The weapon in
his hand did not seem to be any more significant to him than a
teacher’s baton. Doc swung down from his horse, and so did Wyatt.
Doc said, “I’ll take yours,” and led both horses toward the
creek.
Ringo said, “So, I’m to infer you
take no interest in the blood money?”
Wyatt said, “Why would you do that?
We’re hardly gonna let that money go to waste, not after we crossed
back into Arizona.”
“Hmm,” said Ringo. He
brought the barrel of his pistol to scratch his moustache, and Doc,
moving toward the creek with his horse, wondered if the cowboy
would shoot off his nose. “So, you’re not after me, but you are
after the reward on me. Am I to lie very still for several days? If
you kept a bottle of good whiskey near my coffin, I might
manage.”
Doc squatted upstream from the
horses to splash a handful of water against his face. As he lifted
a second handful to drink, he saw the unicorn walking toward
him.
Wyatt and Ringo were only a few
yards away, talking about money and death. Boulders and brush gave
Doc and the unicorn some privacy. The horses noted the creature,
but they continued to drink without a sound of fear or
greeting.
The unicorn paused on the far side
of the creek. It raised its head to taste the air. Its horn could
impale or eviscerate buffalo, but if there was any meaning in the
lift of the horn, it was a salute.
Wyatt was telling Ringo, “We’d meet
in Colorado after they paid us. We’d give you your third, and you
could go to Mexico or hell, for all we cared. Everyone’d be happy.
You’re gettin’ a little too well known to keep on in these parts as
Ringo, you know.”
“How would I trust
you?”
Wyatt made a sound like a laugh.
“How would we trust you? Our reputation with Wells Fargo will hang
on you stayin’ dead once we said you was.”
“Huh,” said Ringo,
and then he laughed. “Hell, I ain’t been dead before. Why
not?”
The unicorn, if it heard the
speakers, ignored them. It stepped into the creek. At the splash of
its hoof, Ringo said, “What’s—”
Doc heard them, but he kept his
eyes on the unicorn, suspecting that now, if he looked away, he
would never see it again. He thought of Big Nose Kate, and how she
had cared for him, and he wondered if she had known any man who
could not be said to have failed her.
Wyatt said, “Hell, Johnny, ain’t
you seen a unicorn before? That there’s Carty John, the lord of the
desert.”
“Well, I never,” said
Ringo.
Doc heard the two men move closer,
and saw the unicorn glance toward them. As it stepped sideways,
ready to turn and run, Doc said calmly, “Back off. This is my
play.”
He heard Wyatt and Ringo withdraw a
few feet. The unicorn’s gaze returned to Doc’s face. He extended
his left arm, palm upward to show there was nothing in his hand.
The unicorn took the last step, and its breath was warm on Doc’s
skin. He was afraid he would cough and scare it away, then realized
he felt no need to cough.
Wyatt called softly, “Want me to
fetch a rope?”
Ringo laughed, “Hell, ain’t no need
of that.”
Wyatt said, “What do you
mean?”
Ringo said, “Look at that! It’ll
follow Doc like a lovesick pup now.” He laughed again, even more
loudly, and Doc heard the sound of a man slapping his knee in
delight as Ringo added, “And you know why?”
Wyatt said, “No. Why?”
Ringo said, “’Cause there’s one
thing a unicorn’ll fall for, and that’s—”
Doc heard the pistol shot, then
felt the pistol in his right hand. Ringo slumped to his knees and
fell forward, hiding the hole in his face and exposing the larger
one in the back of his head.
Wyatt went to calm their horses.
The unicorn stayed by Doc. It had not spooked at the sound, sight,
or smell of death. Doc let the pistol slide back into his
holster.
Wyatt said, “Well, it’ll be easier
to convince Wells Fargo he’s dead now.”
“Mmm.”
Wyatt squatted by Ringo, drew a
knife, and cut a piece of scalp from Ringo’s hairline. “What you
want to do with Carty John there? Start up a unicorn show, or sell
him?”
“He won’t abide
crowds.”
Wyatt dropped his hand to the gun
at his thigh. “You figure to shoot him then, or should
I?”
Both pistols cleared their holsters
at the same time. Neither fired. Doc and Wyatt stood still, Wyatt’s
pistol aimed at Doc’s sternum, Doc’s pistol aimed more toward Wyatt
than anything else.
Time passed, perhaps slowly,
perhaps quickly. Wyatt lowered his head, but not his gun, a
fraction of an inch in a question. Doc answered by swinging his
pistol behind him as he yelled, “Git!” The barrel struck something
soft, and he thought it had been easier to send Kate
away.
The unicorn did not try to impale
him. It spun and ran. As it splashed across the creek and onto the
sand, Doc holstered his pistol. He listened to the unicorn’s
hooves, but he did not turn to watch it go. He stepped forward,
then fell coughing to his knees in the creek.
Wyatt took him by the shoulders to
lift him and direct him toward the bank. While Doc sat on a boulder
in the sun, Wyatt found Ringo’s horse, saddled it, rolled Ringo’s
body in a blanket, then lashed it across the back of the horse.
Wyatt said, “You want his boots?”
Doc looked where Ringo had been
reading, then shook his head.
Wyatt said, “If they were all that
comfortable, he’d’a’ been wearing ’em.”
Doc said, “I’ll take the
book.”
Wyatt picked up The Iliad, handed
it to Doc, then said, “Ready to ride?”
“At a moment’s
notice,” Doc said, and he stood, wondering if that was true. He
tucked the book in his saddle bag, then swung himself onto his
horse’s back. “Where you taking him?”
Wyatt turned his horse back the way
they had come. “I got a plan.”
“As good as your last
one?”
“I
’xpect.”
“That’s
comforting.”
“Killing Stilwell and
Curly Bill so publicly just created messes for us. I figure to prop
Johnny down by the road into town, which ought to get a story goin’
that he up and killed his sorry ass hisself.”
Doc considered several flaws in the
plan, but said nothing. It would be a last joke on the town that
had driven them away. He could hear people arguing why Ringo’s
boots were missing and whether a self-inflicted wound should be
ringed with powder burns. It would be less than a joke, or more. It
would be a mystery, and therefore it would be like life.
“Sure,” Doc said, and
coughed.
They left Ringo near a farmhouse
and let his horse go free. Wyatt had hung Ringo’s cartridge belts
upside-down on him, but Doc did not ask whether that was to make it
look like Ringo had been extremely drunk, or was another little
taunting detail for Sheriff Behan and Tombstone’s legal
establishment, or was simply a sign that Wyatt’s mind was on other
things.