And Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rowf!" And everyone knew that meant "yes!" (Though it really
meant, "You smell that dead skunk? Let's all go roll on
it!")

 
    Taken He
Cannot Be
    Will Shetterly
    Things die. This is the lesson that
everyone learns. Some do not learn it until the instant before
death, but we all learn it. We pass our final exam by dying. Dr.
John Henry Holliday earned his diploma from the school of life at a
younger age than most. At twenty, he had been told that consumption
would kill him in six months, yet at thirty, he still lingered
around the campus. He supposed he was a tenured professor of death,
which made him laugh, which made him cough, which made him think
about the man they had come to meet, and kill.
    He rode through the midsummer heat
beside his best friend, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp. They had both grown
beards to disguise themselves, and they had dressed like cowboys
instead of townsmen. No one who saw them pass at a distance would
recognize the dentist-turned-gambler or Tombstone’s former deputy
sheriff, both wanted in Arizona on charges of murder.
    They rode to kill John Ringgold,
better known as Johnny Ringo. Wyatt had said that Wells Fargo would
pay for Ringo’s demise, and Doc had always believed in being paid
to do what you would do cheerfully for free. He did not know or
care how much Wells Fargo might pay. He was not sure whether Wells
Fargo had made an offer, or Wyatt had merely assumed the coach line
would show its gratitude for the death of the last leader of the
Clanton gang. Doc knew Wyatt had asked him to come kill Johnny
Ringo, and that sufficed. Had anyone asked him why he agreed, he
would have said he had no prior engagements. The only person who
might have asked would have been Big Nose Kate Elder, and she had
left him long ago.
    •
    The brown hills stirred frequently
as they rode. The two riders always looked at motion—in a land
where bandits waited for their piece of wealth from the booming
silver mines, you always looked. They never expected more than
sunlight on quartz, or dust in a hot puff of wind, or a lizard
darting for food or shelter. Vision was simultaneously more
powerful and less trustworthy in this dry land. The eye saw far in
the parched atmosphere, but it did not always see
truthfully.
    The unicorn showed itself on a
rise. Doc never thought that it might be a wild horse. Though it
was the size of a horse, it did not move like a horse, and he had
never seen a horse with such white, shaggy fur, and that long, dark
spear of its horn left no doubt, at least not in a person who lived
by assessing situations instantly, then acting.
    Doc acted by not acting: he did not
flinch or blink or gasp or look away in order to look back. If this
apparition was his private fantasm, he would not trouble Wyatt with
its existence. If it was not, Wyatt would say something.
    And Wyatt did. “Doc?”
    “Eh?”
    “What’s that
critter?”
    “Unicorn.”
    “Eh.”
    They rode for another minute or
two. The unicorn remained on the ridge. Its head moved slightly to
follow them as they passed.
    Wyatt said, “What’s a
unicorn?”
    “In Araby they call
it cartajan. Means ‘lord of the desert.’”
    “I can see
that.”
    “‘ The cruelest is the unicorn, a monster that belloweth
horribly, bodied like a horse, footed like an elephant, tailed like
a swine, and headed like a stag. His horn sticketh out of the midst
of his forehead, of a wonderful brightness about four foot long, so
sharp, that whatsoever he pusheth at, he striketh it through
easily. He is never caught alive; killed he may be, but taken he
cannot be.’”
    “Huh. Shakespeare or
the Bible?”
    “Some old-time Roman
named Solinus, translated by some old-time Englishman who might’ve
supped with Master Will and King Jim.”
    “I ain’t never seen
no unicorn before.”
    “Nor yet. That’s a
mirage. A will o’ the wisp. The product of a fevered
brain.”
    “I reckon you’re
contagious, then.”
    Doc laughed, then coughed, then
said,