Return of the Gun. R. B. Conroy

cus, I’ll tell you one, but you gotta promise you’ll never ask me again. I’m not much on talkin’ about myself.”

      “Ya got my word!”

      Jon fell back in his chair and took a drag on his Havana. A plume of smoke drifted slowly to the ceiling. He was quiet for a while as if in deep thought and then spoke slowly.

      “A while back, I was travelin’ down the Santa Fe Trail on my way to California. I’d been ridin’ hard for several days and decided to stop in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and stock up a little. It was a good gaming town, so I decided to spend some time there, do a little gambling and so on.

      “I found a good hotel, took a hot bath and headed for a nearby saloon to try and find a game of stud. A short time later, three cowhands came in lookin’ for a fourth, so I joined ’em. After we started playin’, my tooth started botherin’ me again.”

      “Your tooth?”

      “Yeah, I chipped a tooth during a fight in Hays, Kansas, a few months earlier, and it was really startin’ to hurt. Just as I was dragging in a small pot, the bartender poured me a heapin’ mug of beer fresh out of the root cellar. I took a big swig of that cool beer, and it ran smack dab into my achin’ tooth. The pain shot clean through my body. I jumped clear outta my chair yelping and hollerin’. The other players were laughin’ like crazy.

      “‘Get on down to the dentist!’ one of them shouted.

      “‘Where the hell is he?’ I hollered.

      “‘At the north end of town, right next to the telegraph office.’

      “I rushed outta there fast as a jack rabbit, jumped on Babe, and headed for the north end of town. The telegraph office sign and the small building next door were soon in sight. There was a buggy out front. I was heartbroken—I thought there was someone in front of me. But luckily for me, when I hopped down and hurried inside, the big leather dentist’s chair was empty. I looked around the room for the doctor, but he was nowhere to be found. Just then, the back door popped open and this fella hurried in, holding a small metal pan. The sun was bright behind him so he was kind of in the shadows.

      “He said hello, slammed the door and pointed toward the chair. Still hurtin’ like crazy, I jumped in that chair like a flash. He started rummaging around on the counter behind me. The scent of expensive cologne filled the air.

      “He asked what the problem was. I explained about the chipped tooth and how the pain shot clear through me when I took that swig of cool beer. He looked at me and kind of chuckled. All of a sudden, my seat fell back, and I was staring straight at the ceiling.

      “I told him I was Jon Stoudenmire and stuck my hand back over my shoulder for a shake.

      “‘John Holliday,’ he said. ‘Glad to meet ya.’ He reached back with his left hand, squeezed my fingers and shook my hand.”

      “John who?” Cliff shouted.

      Jon smiled at his excited cousin. “As he bent over me, I got a better look at him. There was no doubt about it. It was none other than the famous man killer Doctor John Holliday, bending over me and gettin’ ready to pull my tooth.”

      “Well, if that just don’t beat all!”

      “Yeah, I was plenty surprised all right. I thought he’d given up dentistry a long time ago. I sure didn’t expect to see him in Las Vegas that day. Maybe he wanted to give dentistry one more shot, or he was tryin’ to go straight or something. I dunno.”

      “Go on.” Cliff was getting impatient.

      “He stuck his finger in my mouth and looked around a minute. He shook his head and told me it was going to have to come out. He handed me a bottle of whiskey and ask me to take a couple of swigs.

      “I grabbed the bottle and kind of hesitated.

      “He noticed my reluctance and tried to explain. He said whiskey was the only pain killer he had, and it was strictly for customers only—he never drank out of it.

      “So then I took a couple of big swigs.”

      “Why’d ya wait to take a drink?”

      “Everybody knows Doc’s got consumption—I was too young to die!” Jon laughed.

      “Oh yeah, I guess so,” Cliff said.

      “He looked kinda dragged out, pale and all. Nothing like I expected, but I guess when you’re sick like he is, you don’t look too good. But I tell ya, those blue eyes of his had a mean look to ‘em. I could see a killer there in those eyes.

      “He stepped away and started digging through a pile of dental tools or something on that table behind me. Then he told me to grab hold of the sides of the chair. Then the skinny critter climbed on top of me and stuck this god-awful lookin’ pair of pliers way down in my mouth and started yankin’ on that tooth. I thought his eyeballs were gonna pop out of his head. All of the sudden, he jumped off of the chair and started waving that bloody tooth around. He was like a kid in a candy store! I couldn’t believe how excited he got. He stuck it in front of me so I could get at good look at it. He dropped it in a metal pan on the table, washed his hands again and stuffed a whole wad of cotton in my mouth.”

      “How’d he do?”

      “I’ll have to say, for as shaky as he was, he did a pretty damn good job. It didn’t hurt near as bad as I thought it would. And surprisingly, he didn’t get a drop of my blood on that fancy silk shirt and tie he was wearin’.

      “After a couple of minutes, he pulled that big piece of cotton out of my mouth, pulled the side of my mouth open and looked inside. After stuffing a smaller piece of cotton in, he told me to shut my mouth.

      “He reached down for the handle on the chair and gave it a yank. He was stronger than I expected. The chair popped up, and he looked over at me and smiled. Then he said something that really surprised me. He looked me straight in the eye and said that he had always wanted to meet me. He said Wyatt told him a few years ago that I was one tough son-of-a-bitch. My face got a little red when he said that.”

      “As red as it is now?” Cliff quipped.

      “Yeah, I guess so,” the embarrassed gunman replied.

      “What happened next?”

      “Then he told me that he and his long time girl, Kate, better known as Big Nose Kate, got in one whale of a fight back in Dodge, so he left town and headed for Colorado. He said he landed in Trinidad, where a young gunhand named Kid Colton badgered him into a fight. In an attempt to defend himself, he shot him dead. Fearing reprisals from the locals, he didn’t linger long in Trinidad. He packed up and headed out for New Mexico Territory. He said he was tired of all the killing and hoping for a new beginning, so he thought he’d try dentistry again. Then he kind of sighed, dumped my tooth in a trash can and walked over to the front door. Looking a little down, he grabbed the most expensive lookin’ suit coat I’ve ever seen off the hook on the door and slipped it on. As I was climbing out of the chair, I asked him how business was going.

      “Frowning, he said not very good. He said he was closing up and that he had opened a small saloon down on Center Street. And then to my surprise, he asked me to join him for a game of stud that night.”

      “Tell me it ain’t true, cus! You and Doc Holliday in a card game!”

      “Yeah, I was pretty much shocked all right. I told him I had a few things to do, and I would join him later.

      “He nodded and laid his hand on my shoulder as we walked out the front door. He locked the door and strolled toward the center of town. Still tryin’ to absorb the whole affair, I just stood for a minute and watched him walk away. This bad man, legendary killer of the West, turned out to be a likeable, well-spoken man.”

      “That’s really somethin’,” Cliff exclaimed.

      “Yeah, but it didn’t take long for me to see the other side of Doc Holliday.”

      “Oh