Doc: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kate.
    “ Cito acquiritur, cito perit ,” she murmured when he lost a $700 hand.
    Without thinking, he heard the phrase as plainly as if she’d said it in English. Easy come, easy go. Leaning back in his chair, he gazed at a small, fair-haired whore with eyes the color of Indian turquoise. He’d seen her before. She liked to watch the gamblers when she wasn’t working.
    “Game’s not over yet. Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit ,” he remarked experimentally.
    Astonished, she said, “ Lingua Latina non mortua est! ”
    “Latin’s not dead yet,” he confirmed, adding in a soft murmur, “and neither am I. What’s your name, darlin’?”
    “Mária Katarina Harony,” she said, coming closer. “Americans call me Kate.”
    He rose and brought her hand to his lips. “John Holliday,” he told her. “Miss Kate, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
    Two hours later, up by almost a grand, he gathered his money. Eyes on Kate, who had stuck around, John Henry addressed the table. “ Tempus fugit , gentlemen, and I believe I have found a better use of my time.”
    What force brought them together? Dumb luck, the Fates, or Fortune’s whim? All John Henry knew was that he was a little less lonely after he met Kate, not quite so starved for conversation in a land that seemed to him peopled by illiterate barbarians. In a voice sanded down by cigarettes and whiskey, Kate spoke excellent French and Spanish as well as her native Magyar and German, all in addition to the crude but fluent bordello English she had learned in adolescence.
    And she could quote the classics in Latin and in Greek.

    “Doc, what’s half of three hundred and fifty thousand?” she asked over breakfast a few days later.
    From the start she called him Doc, as though that were his Christian name. Soon others did the same. He found he didn’t mind.
    “A hundred seventy-five thousand,” he told her. “Why?”
    “What’s seven times a hundred and seventy-five thousand?”
    Frowning, he made the calculation. “A million and a quarter. Why?”
    “What’s eight times a hundred and seventy-five thousand?”
    “A million four,” he said. “Will we be movin’ on to spellin’ next?”
    “Dodge City expects three hundred and fifty thousand head of cattle this season,” she said, tapping the newspaper spread out before her on the table. “Seven dollars a heifer, eight for a steer …” She looked up. “How much is that, total?”
    “Two million, six hundred and fifty thousand,” he said. “ Why? ”
    Those turquoise eyes were half-closed now in dreamy speculation. “Two million, six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in five months’ time … We should move to Dodge,” she decided.
    We? he thought.
    “Kansas?” he said, as though she were mad and that settled it.
    “That’s where the money is.”
    “Suit yourself,” he told her, “but I am not goin’ to Kansas.”
    “ Sera in fondo parsimonia ,” she warned.
    Seneca! he thought. Thrift awaits at the bottom of an empty purse.
    Her Latin was always a treat.
    “This town’s played out,” she told him on the way back to their hotel room, a few weeks after they met. They had already separated twice by then; Kate could be hell to live with, but they were good together, too. “You didn’t win nothing last night.”
    “I did all right,” he objected.
    He’d cleared almost $400 at the game. That was more than most men made in a year, but most men didn’t have his expenses. Kate did not present herself as tastefully as she might have; that reflected on him. He’d bought a new wardrobe for her just before they left the city.
    Kate was genuinely mystified by his reluctance to try Kansas. “Fort Griffin is even worse than Dallas!” she cried. “Doc, why are we wasting time in a dump like this? You could be pulling in thousands in Dodge!”
    “No, and that’s final,” he muttered. He wasn’t even sure why he didn’t want to go. He just didn’t like being