Doctor Who: The Gunfighters Read Online Free PDF Page A

gotta promise me you’ll stay out of the Last Chance till they blow over. Won’t take long at that, the way they’re drinkin’...’
    ‘Now, that don’t appeal, Kate, that don’t come at all natural. Comes the day I can’t step into a saloon for a thimble of dry sherry, it’ll be my liver stops me – not a bunch of boozed-up hoodlums!’
    ‘I’ll stop you, Holliday, if I have to,’ said a third, gravel-filtered voice, joining the discussion uninvited.
    Fortunately, Doc recognised it, and put his Derringer back where it belonged. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘the big man! I was wondering when you’d show up, Masterson.’
    ‘Soon as I heard you was in town,’ croaked Bat, ‘I figured it was time to tell you to get the hell out of it.’
    ‘Now, why is everyone so goddam friendly so sudden? I tell you Sheriff, I’m a respectable tradesman now – a professional practitioner of the orthodontic art. I got no quarrel with anybody, have I, Kate?’
    ‘Not that I’ve heard,’ simpered Goody-Two-Boots, primly.
    ‘Well then, keep out of trouble for one; jest stay in your hygienic, sweat-shop surgery, an’ we’ll get along fine.’
    ‘Why, Bat, I was just about to enter same. And I surely do look forward to the pleasure of entertainin’ you in my sparklin’ new chair real soon. Don’t leave it too long, you hear? There’s a couple of things about your mouth I don’t like the look of; never have done, come to that. Will you take my arm, Miss Catherine, or shall I have someone carry you over the threshold?’
    And the engaged couple entered the marital waiting-room; leaving Bat Masterson to wonder what Holliday had meant about his mouth. What didn’t he like about it?
    Surely not his moustache, of which he was proud. As would have been a walrus.
    He resolved to take the matter up with the dentist at their next meeting; and fingering the treasured growth protectively, he squelched back to his office.
    Where he found company.
     
    6

Identity Parade
    The gaunt Earp had finally established our three jazzily bedizined time travellers in adjacent cells; where they were examining the facilities with ill-concealed distaste.
    ‘If you don’t let us out of here at once,’ the Doctor had warned him, ‘I shall have no alternative but to apply for writs of habeas corpus – and see how you like that!’
    ‘Well, this here’s the Ritz of many a happy corpse, right enough,’ replied their captor, making a rare attempt at humour; ‘but you ain’t leavin’ it till you see fit to tell me who you are an’ where you come from.’
    And since this, of course, was a thing almost impossible to explain to the uninitiated, the conversation had then reached its long-awaited impasse; and the monolithic Marshal had returned to his gloomy perusal of some of the snappier items contained in the Book of Revelations. The bit about the Great Beast, he’d always rather liked. Put him in mind of his horse, Apocalypse...
    Bat was pleased to see him; but didn’t at once say so.
    Not out of any churlishness – even though Wyatt was in his chair – but because when strong men meet, words are sometimes unnecessary between them. And then there’s the matter of vocabulary, too. I mean, ‘Hallo,’ is somehow inadequate; and ‘Gee, fella, am I glad to see you ?’ seems to be overdoing things rather. No, difficult. Very.
    So for a while there was silence between them, while Bat accidentally rolled his moustache into a cigarette, and Wyatt merely murmured the occasional ‘Hallelujah!’ in his purring, harmonium-like voice.
    At length – ‘I thought you was out lookin’ for the Rudabaugh Bunch?’ said Bat.
    ‘I found ’em,’ said Wyatt. ‘There will be wild rejoicin’ in Hell this very day; and for a twelve-month after, I shouldn’t wonder. Glory be to the power of the Lord!’ he added.
    ‘What?’ said Bat.
    ‘Amen!’ said Wyatt.
    ‘Oh,’ said Bat. He cleared his throat, and fiddled with his badge.
    ‘Don’t do