Turkey Doolan was to see most of it. Nor would he ever forget.
At first, in the dim cast of light from a lamp in an adjacent room, he did not remember where he was. Then, when he recognized the doctor’s office, when he found himself shirtless and with a fresh neat swath of bandage below his left armpit, he endured a moment of acute anxiety. He sat up gingerly, exploring flesh with his fingertips. But there was little pain, even when he pressed forcefully against the gauze itself. So then a new expression came into his freckled face. It was a look of unrestrained enchantment. “Boys,” Turkey said, and almost aloud, “yes sir, I dint jest know Dingus Billy Magee, but him and me was such fond chums — why one time over to the New Mex, darned if’n that Hoke Birdsill dint go and near assassinate me fer Dingus by mistake!”
Breathing deeply, deliciously, Turkey stood. Then he paused again, gazing at his boots where they lay beneath a chair, at his shirt folded on the seat. “Doc?” he said tentatively.
The vest was nowhere to be seen. Turkey’s eyes darted about the small, sparsely furnished quarters. “Now where the hang—?”
So when he heard the sound again, not realizing that this was what had awakened him to start with, he paid no attention, or not immediately. Then, thunder struck, he bolted to the window.
“Escaped?” he muttered. “And done challenged Hoke Birdsill to a—?”
Turkey could barely discern the shouting man himself in the outer darkness, other than to judge him to be tall and evidently bald. He was already some distance away, moving in the direction of Belle Nops’ bordello, although his voice was remarkably sonorous. “Dingus got escaped again?” Turkey repeated. “Again?’9
But it wasn’t that, wasn’t the puzzlement that mattered. It was the remainder of the announcement, as its overwhelming significance dawned upon him, that staggered Turkey Doolan. “Right out there?” he said. “With pistols? At twelve mid—”
Turkey was already fumbling for his watch (actually the property of one P. Strom, or thus it was engraved; Turkey had found it atop some loose sheets from a farmer’s almanac years before, in a latrine behind a Lubbock restaurant). The watch read only eleven-forty, but Turkey snatched up his boots and shirt nonetheless. “Because I wouldn’t take a chance on missing this fer all the free nooky from here to Medicine Hat,” he declared. He rushed into the next room.
So there sat the doctor in his nightshirt, calmly drinking something from a steaming mug as if nothing of earth-shaking consequence were about to occur at all. “Why, howdy, son,” he said pleasantly. “Feeling ballsy after your sleep, are you? Go help yourself to a spot of coffee—”
“Coffee?” Turkey stared at him incredulously. “Now? When the notoriousest desperado and the hardest-rock sheriff in the whole untamed West is gonter meet each other face-to-face in a gun shoot? How could any human bean in his right mind sit there drinking coffee at a time like—”
“Now, son,” the doctor said, his look inexplicably one of amusement also, “I reckon Dingus Billy Magee is up to some mischief or other right about now, sure as snakes suck eggs.
But you don’t rightly expect that either of them two critters is imbecile enough to parade on out there into that pitch-black street and—”
“Huh?” Turkey said. “Well, you heard the feller calling it out, dint you? Why, this is a event folks’ll be recollecting about fer jest years, like they does about all Wild Bill’s gun battles up to Kansas, or—”
“Wild Bill?” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Wild Bill Hickok? Now where’d you ever hear about him having a actual—”
“Hear?” Turkey stomped into a boot. “Jest every darned place I ever rode, is all, about how he faced down more foes’n you could count, and—”
“Seems right peculiar to me,” the doctor decided, “seeing as how I come from Kansas myself, and the onliest time I ever heard of Wild Bill actually killing even one single person a-tall — I mean not counting in the war or against Injuns, of course — well, it were sure a mite different from what you’re talking on. That were up to Abilene in Seventy-one, if’n you’re interested, one night when there happened to be some ruckus going on which it were Bill’s obligation to investigate, him being town marshal. Now he waits until things is simmered down, nacherly, afore he saunters out, but then jest about the same time, why here comes another feller creeping round likewise, whereupon Bill murders him on sight. Or what I mean, it were sound he murdered him on, because if’n he took time to look first he might of noticed it were his best chumjest being curious like Bill hisself concerning what the fuss were about. Which is what’s likely to happen to you, incidentally, like it done once tonight already, if’n you go poking outside there. But it also oughter make the point somewhat clear that there jest ain’t no such occurrence as a pistol fracas where two fellers march straight on up the avenue and—”
Turkey was buttoning his shirt. “Doc, you must of been seeing things. But even if you wasn’t, what about say Mister Wyatt Earp then, when him and his brothers and Doc Hol-liday kilt them other fellers in the famous disagreement over to the O.K. Corral in Tombstone? Now you can’t tell me that one dint happen just like—”
“Oh, that were a case where folks jest walked right on up to each other, I reckon,” the doctor admitted. “Excepting how it turned out after the smoke blowed away, them mis-fortunate Clanton riders hadn’t had but one lone handgun betwixt the four of them — which the Earps just happened to be informed of in advance, incidentally, since it were Wyatt hisself who’d pointed out the town ordinance against carrying weapons and made them other boys turn ‘em in to commence with. So—”
“Aw, well, what’s that got to do with anything anyways?” Turkey demanded. “It’s still all besides the point to what’s gonter happen out there in that street in jest about ten quick minutes, when—”
So now the doctor began to mumble as if for his own conviction only. “Wild Bill were sitting at a poker table with’n his back turned when they shot him in it. Billy Bonney were on his way to carve hisself a slice of eating beef when Pat Garrett kilt him in a dark room without no word of previous notice neither. Bill Longley got strung up by the neck, and Clay Allison fell out’n a mule wagon and broke his’n. That feller Ford snuck up to the ass-end of Jesse James, and John Ringo blowed out his own personal brains, and John Wesley Hardin is doing twenty-five years in the Huntsville Penitentiary.” The doctor looked up almost sadly. “But now all of a sudden either Hoke Birdsill or Dingus Billy Magee is gonter become the first individual in modern-day history, outside of maybe in that there traveling show Buffalo Bill Cody done put together to bamboozle a bunch of lard-headed Easterners, who’s gonter get kilt by sashaying accommodatingly on up to another feller he knows is carrying a primed firearm in his hand and—”
“Doc, don’t tell me no more,” Turkey cut in then. “Because none of that applies nohow, since this here’s Dingus Billy Magee hisself, and not them others. And you jest don’t seem to know it, I reckon, but Dingus is the boldest, fear-somest, most lion-heartedest desperado that ever drawed blood. Why, he’s a real modern Robbing Hood, too, who’d loan a pard the actual duds ofPn his back. Or you take what he informed me jest the other week, about how he met up with Mister Earp and Doc HoUiday theirselves when they was down on their luck over towards the Pecos once, and he dint even bear them no grudge from their previous disagreements neither, as when he’d had to pistol-whip them one time, but out’n pure Christian generosity he give them every red cent he had in his poke. And now tonight — why tonight’s gonter be jest the most valiant episode in his whole astounding career, is all.”