Faster Gun

“But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger!” Doc cried, as much to encourage himself as anything else. His own voice sounded as if it came through layers of cotton wool. Flora stared at him, and so did Bill.

Of course they’d seen his mouth moving. And they couldn’t make out a blasted word.

He gave Flora a push on the shoulder, urging her to stay still as he poked his head out quickly to assess. The horses were still sidling and stamping, but there was no more gunfire, and they had stopped rearing against the reins. Miss Lil, Missus Shutt, and Missus Jorgensen stood shoulder to shoulder in the center of the chamber, each one eyeing a different tunnel mouth. Of the moon man, there was no sign.

Doc yawned to pop his ears, hoping. He could fool himself that the ringing eased a little.

“Shit!” Flora snarled, then covered her lips in horror when he looked at her mildly, feeling his eyebrows rise.

“My momma would be scandalized,” Doc said, and kissed her quick, sideways across that unladylike mouth. Beside them, Bill rocked back against the wall, looking away quickly.

Doc, he thought, setting Flora back into the alcove, did you just kiss a Negress? Well, that wasn’t like him at all.

Of course she didn’t stay where he set her. When he stepped out, mincing, his pistol in his hand, she was there too, that shotgun she’d somehow hung on to at low ready. He scuffed his own over with his boot and crouched to scoop it up, hoping he wouldn’t have to fire it before he had a chance to check the barrel.

When he started to stand again, Doc coughed hard, and kept coughing. When his lungs spasmed to a stop, before he could make himself look up, he wiped the froth of blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. He had seen it often enough to know it was crimson, a fresh, juicy red like poppy petals and cherry jam—but in the dim blue light of the derelict it was just a dark smear like any blood by moonlight. John Keats, physician and poet, had said upon coughing that red, “I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant.”

John Henry Holliday, dentist and son of a consumptive, was no more likely to be misled. But he had already outlived poor Keats by half a decade, and the bullet that was supposed to shorten his suffering hadn’t yet arrived.

No doubt delayed in the mail.

A gentle hand brushed his shoulder. Warmth and ease followed the contact. Miss Lil. He pressed the bloody hand to his lips so he wouldn’t cough in her face and looked up.

“I’m a healer,” she said. “Can I help?”

He’d heard of such hexes. Never met one. Even the strongest couldn’t heal consumption, or potter’s rot, or cancer. But she could probably ease his pain. He imagined the clean pleasure of drawing a breath that would fill him all the way to the bottom instead of one that choked and suffocated like a lungful of stones.

He couldn’t speak. He nodded.

She laid one hand on his back between the shoulders and murmured some indistinct words. When she pulled away, he stood up straight and shivered.

“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said.

She patted his shoulder. “Don’t mention it.”

They went looking for the moon man, and also for the man with the gun. Miss Lil found the scuffed place in the trash below the tunnel where the moon man had fallen. She followed it to a series of freshly broken flakes of rust across the wall that showed where he’d run, sticky as a lizard, along the vertical surface.

“Well I’ll be,” Doc said, edging between two mares to get a better look at the wall. “And here’s a mark from a ricochet.”

He pushed a fingertip against it, judging the angle, and glanced back over his shoulder to confirm. “The shooter was down that passage behind the moon man. I don’t know how he could have missed. He had a clear shot at the critter’s back.”

“And the… moon man… he ran through us to lose the shooter.” Miss Lil hesitated over the term, but once she’d chewed on it for a minute she seemed to accept it. Missus Jorgensen, coming up on their right, paused at the edge of the conversation. Her hair was coming loose around her face in pale wisps. Her holster was still unbuttoned.

Doc shrugged. “In his boots, wouldn’t you?”

“He wasn’t wearing boots,” said Missus Jorgensen, provoking Miss Lil to giggle shockingly, for a woman with Flora’s shotgun balanced over one shoulder.

“He wasn’t wearing much of anything,” Flora said, coming up along the other side of one of the mares.

Doc bit down on his own laugh. He was breathing easier, sure, but he didn’t want to push his luck. “You think that was the only one?”

“I think it wasn’t threatening,” said Missus Jorgensen. “I think it was trying to make friends.”

Doc met her gaze and nodded. “Shooter was after a trophy, like as not,” he said. “You could get a good price from a side show for a dead moon man.”

Missus Jorgensen recoiled, chin tucking as if she’d taken a blow. “But they’re… ”