Prescott is just like any other western town really, nothing exciting or different. A rail head, a bank, opium dens, saloons, dance halls, gambling houses, whores. He's seen it all hundreds of times, and it doesn't excite him anymore.
He's twenty-seven, and can't understand how he's become so world weary. Back in university, everything was exciting – medicine, women, the world outside. And now, now he finds that most of the time he couldn't care less. He's going through the motions, gambling, drinking, easing the pain in his shoulder, and none of it matters.
John looks up from his cards. The card shark, Jonathan Hope, has laid down his hands. "Three queens," Hope says, sitting back in his chair, a self-satisfied smile on his face. "What do you have, Watson?"
Three queens. Who does he think he's playing? Some kid fresh from the round-up who's never played competently in his life? John smirks. "One woman maybe you can trust. But three? Not on your life." His shoulder is testament enough to that, aching as he lays down his hand of cards. "Royal flush." There's a collective intake of breath from around the table.
"I can't top that," another player, Hall, declares, tossing down his cards in a jumble. The other unnamed gambler, a young man with dark curls, shakes his head, laying down his cards neater. "Nor me," he says.
It's a rich pot, comprised of two hundred dollars and a decent watch, courtesy of the curly man. John draws it closer to him, shuffling the money together before pocketing it along with the watch. "Much obliged, gentlemen." He pushes back from the table and leaves, heading back to the bar to refresh himself. Maybe he'll find a whore and splash some of his winnings. It's a guilty thought – he should be saving this money to go into practice, but how is he supposed to perform surgery with the mess that his shoulder is in? His hand has developed a tremor which unnerves him to notice.
He sips at his beer and sighs, surveying the room, fingering the watch in his pocket. It's a nice model, no doubt about that, if a little battered and worn. The chain twines around his fingers, sinuous and delicate. The curly-haired young man who it belonged to before the poker game pushes back from the table and saunters towards the bar. He's tall, gangly and sharp-featured with the washed-out look of an opium user, eyes shadowed by the broad-brimmed hat covering his hair.
He leans up beside John at the bar and orders a whisky, knocking it back fast.
"If you give me a chance, I'll buy that watch back off you," he says, nodding at the pocket where the watch is nestled. His voice is rich, and his careful enunciation gives away his education. He's eastern, and it is stamped all over that voice, try as he may to fit in. John doesn't re-call coming to such a conclusion over the poker game, then again he was a little pre-occupied. Probably he just didn't notice.
"No." He shakes his head. "I quite like it and I won it in a fair game."
The man sighs, for he is a man no matter how much he looks like a wayward boy. "I'll give you a hundred dollars for it."
A hundred dollars? It would be extortion to accept that for it. "It's hardly worth fifty."
"I'd redeem it any day for a thousand." His voice is hard, an edge to it as sharp as a knife.
John frowns. "If it's that special, then why did you throw it into the pot?" A body has the right to know what he's giving up for a hundred dollars, after all.
The man furrows his brow. "You're a doctor. In fact, you're a surgeon with a gambling habit, which is how you've gotten shot in the shoulder. I'd put the wound at about two months old, and more than likely the man who inflicted it was aiming for your chest. It's mostly healed, but you're still tender with it and are convinced that you would have done a better job at treating it if the roles had been reversed. You're probably correct. You're not a drinking man, or at least not to excess, and yet your own watch was once owned by a drunkard. You're apathetic, bored. The cards are losing their appeal though you've proven tonight that you still have the ability to win big. Am I wrong?"
The words roll smoothly off his tongue, and John is taken aback. "Amazing."
"So I'm right."
"Almost. It was a woman who shot me."
The man swears. "There's always something."
The exasperation makes John grin, and he extends his hand. "John Watson. We may as well go all the way seeing as how you know so much about me anyway."
This draws a smile from the man, and he shakes John's hand. "Sherlock Holmes."
"I'll buy you a drink."