The Doctor And The Tinpan by Stephen Hawkins (the beach read .TXT) 📖

into the shootout at the OK Corral. Sheriff Johnny Behan had served them the writs at their house, and he'd been smug about it.

"You're gonna have to testify before the inquiry into the killing of Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers," he'd said. "And if you don't show, I will arrest you for contempt of court. Believe me, gentlemen, I will bring the damn army with me if I have to."

It was probably Johnny's greatest living moment. As for Johnny's paymaster, Ike Clanton, no one had seen hide or hair of him since the shootout. He was laying low at his ranch, but come the trial, he'd be blowing hard in his attempts to see the Earp "gang" hung for murdering his brother.

***

Further along the plank-walk, the Time Lord sat on a bench watching the hustle and bustle in the street. In his shiny, black and white shoes, square-patched suit and bowler hat, he looked like a showman with a bag of tricks by his side.

As the three men approached him, he knew who they were, and with a gracious smile, he stood up and doffed his bowler hat. "Good day, gentlemen. Can I say how honored I am to meet you."

As with Morgan and the Doc, Wyatt wasn't inclined to be civil. He had seen this man's breed before...

"What's it to you?" he snapped. "You a carpetbagger?"

"I am most certainly not," the Time Lord replied. "I am a traveling doctor."

"You don't say?" Wyatt motioned at the carpetbagger's bag. "What you got in there? Quack medicine?"

"As far as I know, morphine doesn't quack," the Time Lord replied. "But it will relieve the most serious pain for a time."

"Is that so?" Wyatt recalled Virgil's leg had been paining him all night, and in truth, Allie had sent them out to get some whiskey for him. That's all they could get.

"Morphine, you say?"

The Time Lord pulled a small bottle of white powder from his bag. He uncorked the bottle and tasted the powder himself before passing it to Wyatt. As Morgan watched all this, he had an inkling of something strange... A traveling doctor? What is it about him? He just couldn't place it. For some reason, the carpetbagger reminded him of Doc Holliday collapsing in the street.

Morgan shook his head. I'm imagining things. The Doc got up and we helped him back to his room. I remember seeing the Tinpan, but there was no one else there. Wise up.

Wyatt had dusted his own palm.

"Taste it," the Time Lord said.

Although wary, Wyatt did as the carpetbagger said. Morphine was a newfangled drug. He heard it had been used in the Civil War, but he hadn't seen it close up before. But then, on the tip of his tongue, he got the message -- it felt numb.

"How much you say you want for this?"

"Nothing," the Time Lord replied. "History will thank you for what you did yesterday. So take it. It's my gift to you."

Wyatt nodded. "Well, I'm right obliged." And he accepted the proffered handshake. What did you say your name was again?"

"I didn't," the Time Lord replied. "But most people call me the Doctor."

"Well, the hell they do," Wyatt grinned.

In turn, Morgan shook his hand, and then came Doc Holliday. "With more of your likes in town," he said. "We wouldn't have so many dead men to bury."

The Time Lord laughed. "Thank you, sir. It's been a privilege, I'm sure."

The Doc said, "Well, likewise, mister." Then as he, Wyatt and Morgan headed off, the Doc scratched his chin and said to them, "You know, I get the strangest feeling about that man. I surely don't know why."

Neither Wyatt nor Morgan would argue with that. They both had a feeling -- the Doctor as he called himself -- was more than met their eye, but they didn't have the mind to figure out what it was.

As for the Time Lord, he was pleased to have met such famous men. But then, as they receded along the plank-walk, he felt sad as well, for in history, he knew that amongst those three, only Wyatt Earp would see in the twentieth century.

As for their recollection, lest he chose to remind them, none of them including Red Culpepper, would remember him -- the Doctor -- beyond a sense of a dream that wasn't their reality. For when he had sacrificed his former incarnation to save Wyatt Earp's life, he had caused that Time Line to warp and decay. The Time Line of his former incarnation had therefore become consigned to works of the mind.

***

With his new rig, a four-wheeled buggy, Red headed out of town. He had been to the wash house and smelt better. But smelling sweet didn't impress his mule. It took a lot of coaxing and oat feed for it to heed its master's will and pull the load.

Red had gone maybe a mile out of town, when he came upon the strangest sight. Off the road, next to a small hut that reminded him of a dunk-house, he saw a man, a carpetbagger...

"Well I'll be damned-?"

The man was doing tricks. Like pulling a rabbit from a hat. Red had never seen the like, but "carpetbagger?" Red got thinking about it. What Bob had said.

Is this him? he thought? Oh, shit.

And his mule was getting jittery, rearing up.

They weren't going no-where, and Red had this awful feeling this man was working some kind of hocus-pocus. "Oh shit. Don't turn me into a damn toad," he yelped.

The Time Lord laughed. "You don't know me as I am now, but I am here to keep a promise." And with a deft wave of the hand...

Red wasn't a man to pray, but it felt pertinent. The man and the dunk-house had vanished. All Red could see was a bag in the road covered by a red, magic cloth.

After waiting a while to see if anything happened, Red took his life in his hands and jumped off the buggy. His mule nickered at him as he crept by, and it took several tries before Red plucked up the courage to snatch the red, magic cloth away from the bag. And then, what he saw -- "Oh, my. Oh, MY-!"

Gold nuggets glittering before a man's eyes. Can you imagine a world where dreams come true? Red could.

"Holy SHIT!"

Red's mule had never seen its master dance before. And it didn't make a pretty sight, but it nickered and tossed its head as the old Tinpan danced a jig around the bag.

"Hahahahaha. Can you hear that music?" he yelled.

A rootin' an' a tootin' --

Doctor Who.

***

EPILOGUE

On December 1st 1881, Judge Spicer declared his opinion, and it read as thus:

"...The great fact, most prominent in the matter, to wit, that Isaac Clanton was not injured at all, and could have been killed first and easiest...I cannot resist from conviction that the Earps acted wisely, discreetly, and prudentially to secure their own self-preservation - they saw at once the dire necessity of giving the first shot to save themseves from certain death. It was a necessary act done in the discharge of official duty." Wells Spicer was related to the Earps.

So the Earps' name had been cleared, but life in the American West had a way of working "justice". After his decision, Judge Spicer received a death threat saying that it would "only be a matter of time" before he got his. Well, he never did, but on December 28th, 1881 Virgil Earp, who was still Marshall, was crossing the street when an unknown gunman fired out of the shadows. The buckshot went through Virgil's shooting arm. He was never able to shoot with it again.

Two months later, In February 1882, Ike Clanton brought more murder charges against the Earps, but since no new evidence had surfaced, the charges were thrown out.

Then, in March, 1882, while playing billiards at a Tombstone saloon, Morgan Earp got shot in the back, and killed. Another bullet narrowly missed Wyatt. Intent on revenge, Wyatt took only a few weeks to avenge his brother's death. He found and killed his brother's murderer, one Frank Stilwell, who was another Clanton supporter.

As a wanted man, Wyatt, and Josie left Tombstone and went north to Alaska. They never did get followed, and they got to live out fifty odd years together. It was in that time together that Wyatt once confided to Josie...

"If it weren't for the Doc, I wouldn't be alive today. Some put him down, but to me, he was a true friend, and surely the greatest gunman I have ever seen."

As for the Doc, well, on the 8th November, 1887, the end time came for him. He lay dying in a sanitarium when he took a final snort of whiskey and looking down at his feet, he said: "Well, I'll be damned."

He didn't have his boots on.

He died then.

And Ike Clanton? Well, on June 1st, 1887, when he was forty years old, he was shot dead. Some say by a hired gun. The Earps had their supporters too. Ike was buried in an unmarked grave.

Alice Sullivan, Virgil's wife. Her brief obituary appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 1947, noting she was 98 years old.

In 1888, Kate married a blacksmith, named George M. Cummings, but left him in 1889. She began working in the Cochise Hotel. Kate left the hotel ten years later and moved in with a man named Howard. They lived together until he died in 1930. Kate died in 1940 in an Old Pioneer's home.

In 1888, Johnny Behan became superintendent of the Territorial State Prison at Yuma. Later he was a U.S. agent at El Paso where he attempted to control smuggling in the area. Behan was also employed as a government special agent in China of all places. He died in Tucson on 7th June, 1912, a lonely man.

Wyatt Earp died on 13th January, 1929. His Josie died soon after.

***


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Publication Date: 05-06-2010

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