So Morgan left with Chuck, but before Tom McCarty followed them, he took Mattie and Wyatt to the kitchen and showed them how to measure out four grains of dried lycopin extract and stir it into a glassful of water.
“It’s effective against the cough and mildly narcotic,” he told them, pulling his coat on. “When he wakes up, you make him drink a glass of the mixture, but no more than one glass every two hours. Mattie, can you write?”
She nodded and shrugged: A little.
“Well, try to keep track of when you give him a dose, so he doesn’t get too much. If he’s cold, cover him. If he’s hot, open the window again. I don’t think he’ll be hungry, but I’ll stop by Delmonico’s and have them send over some beef broth with plenty of salt. If he asks for anything, offer that.”
Mattie said she’d keep watch the rest of the night. Wyatt knew he ought to stay, but this was so much like when Urilla was dying … So he went home and slept at last, but poorly. He was already up and dressed when Mattie came in a few hours later.
“Kate came back after McCarty left,” she told him, hanging a damp shawl up on the peg next to the door. “Morg’s back, too. He’s staying with Kate so she won’t be alone when Doc dies.”
“So, you’re sure? He’s …?”
“Never saw anybody that sick who didn’t. Why’d you quit?”
He almost said, Because you were right about George Hoover. Because my father is right and I’ve got shit for brains. Because I don’t know who my friends are. Because I don’t know who to trust anymore, except my brothers.
What came out was “Politics.” Which was true enough.
For the first time since she moved in, he wished that Mattie would talk more, for his own thoughts were loud in his mind. Maybe McCarty was right. Maybe what happened to Doc wasn’t Wyatt’s fault, just like it wasn’t really Wyatt’s fault when Urilla got typhus, but it sure felt like it was, and Mattie wasn’t one to tell him different.
“I’m going next door,” he said.
Morg answered the knock. Kate was slumped at the table, her head in her hands, too weary to look up. Wyatt’s eyes went to the bedroom where Doc lay, dead white and so motionless beneath the covers Wyatt thought that he’d been laid out. It took a moment to see that Doc was breathing in shallow little gasps, but breathing all the same.
Morg said, “If you can stay with him awhile, I’ll take Kate back to Bessie’s so she can get some sleep.”
Probably the first time a woman ever got any sleep in that place, Wyatt thought, but he told Morg he’d sit with Doc, and that Morg should get some rest, too.
“You know about the medicine?” Morg asked.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Go on.”
“Wyatt … you really quit?”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Go on.”
For the rest of the day, he kept watch by himself, listening to the clock tick, dozing sometimes in the chair. Late in the afternoon, there was a short, quiet dream about Urilla, probably brought on by sitting in a sickroom like this. He was telling her, “If I made more money, I coulda done better by you,” and in the dream, he felt more than heard her say, “Don’t fret, Wyatt.”
He woke up slowly, feeling calm. Then he saw where he was, and straightened, and winced, aware of every bruise and cut and aching joint.
Doc was awake, his face expressionless.
“You snore,” he told Wyatt, sounding feeble and aggrieved.
Wyatt started to smile, but it hurt too much and he quit.
Doc seemed to gather himself to say something important, and spoke as firmly as he could, though his voice was somewhere between a whisper and a whine. “Wyatt, I cannot make you another denture. No more fights. You get that mad again, shoot the bastard. Promise me.”
“I promise. How do you feel, Doc?”
Doc’s eyes closed. “Anyone makin’ book?”
“Luke Short was giving ten to one you wouldn’t make it through the night.”
It was a joke. Luke was a gambler who wasn’t even in town anymore, but Doc murmured, “Bet against me? I would’ve.”
Wyatt made him drink a glass of water with lycopin and got him settled back down. A few minutes later, Doc roused again.
“God damn Henry Kahn,” he said, sounding briefly normal. “If he’d been a better shot, he’d have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
There was nothing more for a while, and Wyatt supposed Doc had fallen asleep until a tear formed in the corner of the sick man’s eye and slipped sideways toward the pillow. Wyatt got a handkerchief to dry the pale, bony face. Doc’s eyes opened at the touch, but he was looking at something beyond the room.
“My poor mother …”
This is it, Wyatt thought. When they start talking about their mother, it’s over.
A few minutes later, Doc spoke again.
“Oh, Wyatt,” he whispered, too breathless to sob. “This’s a terrible way to die.”
He said very little during the week after the hemorrhage. “What’s the date?” he asked once. Told it was October 13, he said clearly, “I was supposed to go to St. Francis. Wire my regrets to Alex von Angensperg.”
There was a return telegram the next day. NIL DESPERANDUM STOP 152 CHILDREN 3 PRIESTS 7 NUNS PRAYING STOP MAY I VISIT STOP
It was Morgan Earp who answered. NO VISITORS YET STOP KEEP PRAYING STOP
A routine developed. Kate and Mattie took the nights. Morgan and Wyatt split the days. Lou kept them all fed. Tom McCarty came by to check on Doc, morning and evening.
No one else was permitted into the sickroom, but China Joe appeared each afternoon with a bowl of noodles and left instructions that Doc should eat them for a long life and to fatten up. The first time that happened, Doc came close to crying again.
“How thoughtful,” he said. “Thank him for me, please.”
On the first of November, China Joe showed up at the door as usual, only this time he insisted on waiting until Doc was awake. Morgan offered to take a message in, but the Chinaman would not go away until he was allowed to speak to Doc personally, and when he went into the bedroom, he shut the door behind him to keep the conversation private.
Dong-Sing had heard about the rebellion of Doc’s lungs, of course, and now a single glance was enough to tell him that all Doc’s yin organs were functioning poorly. He was as white and fragile as a porcelain bowl, and you didn’t have to be an herbalist to see that he was in a dangerous condition.
“Mr. Jau,” Doc said softly. “How kind of you to visit.”
“You no talk!” Dong-Sing ordered. Coming closer, he sat on the edge of the chair by Doc’s bed. “You no worry!” He looked around the little room and waved his hand at the roof and walls. “I no charge rent.”
Doc’s eyes widened.
Dong-Sing held his head up proudly. “All these my house. You no tell!” Leaning close to Doc, he whispered, “That nigger boy? He rich: he dead. Teach me big damn lesson. Colored fella get rich in America, no good! George Hoover, he front man! Nobody know China Joe rich fella. So I safe.”
Having unburdened himself of more English than he had ever successfully strung into a single speech, Dong-Sing took a deep breath and let it out abruptly. Then he nodded once, emphatically, like an American. There. I said my piece, by God.
“Kill a chicken …” Doc remembered. “Scare a wolf …?”
“Wolf more damn smart than chicken! Me? I know what what. Now I tell George Hoover, No rent for Doc!” Dong-Sing got even quieter. “You no tell Kate! She got big mouth, tell everybody.”
“You have my word, sir,” Doc told him. “And my gratitude.”
Jau Dong-Sing stood up and made ready to go, but Doc was looking at him with the strange intensity of the very weak, and Dong-Sing was moved to add one thing more.
“I do you big damn favor,” he said, his eyes full of pride and pleasure. “This one big damn happy day for me!”
A little while later, Kate came in with a mug of beef broth. “What did the Chink want?”