And Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

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