Scott leaned back in his chair on the boardwalk outside Beatty and Kelley's Dodge City Restaurant, watching his younger brother. Johnny had sat down, too, when they came out after the breakfast he had barely touched, but after a moment he'd stood up again, to pace back and forth, shoulders hunched, his eyes on the ground except for nervous, almost haunted glances into the street. When he at last slumped back into his chair, Scott spoke.
"Johnny, you can't go on like this. You're not eating, you're not sleeping – I heard you pacing around last night. It's time to face up to what you need to do." He looked along the street to where the town's main hotel stood. "The Dodge House is just down there; that's where he's staying, the notice said."
"He hardly needed to put the notice in the newspaper," Johnny said with a half-laugh. "I reckon everyone in town knows where he is. He's getting quite a reputation as a gunfighter."
"Reputation or not, you should get it over with."
"Even if it means – out?"
"Yes, Johnny, even if it does."
Johnny's gaze wandered to the street once more, his expression bleak. He sighed.
"This trip to Kansas was supposed to be fun. Visiting your friends in Abilene, buying some good quarter horses here in Dodge to take back to Lancer, having a fine time in some lively saloons – then this has to happen! But you're right, Scott. There's no use putting it off any longer."
"Want me to go with you?"
"Thanks, but no. This is something I ought to see through myself."
Scott nodded his understanding as Johnny stood up and started along the boardwalk.
The walk up Front Street seemed endless to Johnny, yet at the same time it was all too soon that he found himself standing in the lobby of the Dodge House. Room 24, the notice had said. Johnny walked up the stairs and along the hallway, drew a deep breath and knocked on the door. It was opened by a thin, sombre-looking man.
"Doc Holliday?"
"Yes," the man answered. He regarded his visitor for a moment then said, "It's Johnny Madrid, isn't it?"
Johnny hesitated. There was still time to back out. He could say something commonplace and leave... No! He braced himself, and said the words after which there could be no turning back:
"Doc, I got a real bad toothache..."