Death Has Its Price
Chapter 2 – To Hell and Back"You know what we forgot?"
"No, what?"
"We forgot to trade wallets."
Bart thought about it for a minute. Doc was absolutely right. "I guess you just have to be Bart Maverick for a while longer."
"Alright by me," Doc answered. "Half the world's not lookin' to kill Bart Maverick."
"On a good day, you mean," the gambler replied.
"I do, indeed."
They'd been riding since morning, up into and across the Superstition Mountains. The horses weren't having an easy time of it; the terrain was rocky and difficult to traverse. Up and down, up and down, slow and treacherous going. They would have ridden around, but the long way added three days to an already difficult trip.
"Remind me next time we come through this way, not to," Bart remarked. All around them were rocks, rocks, and more rocks, along with boulders, stones, pebbles and nature's own gravel. To top it off, distant thunder had been heard all morning, and the constant rumbling had set everyone's nerves on edge. They'd been climbing in altitude for almost an hour and the trail got steadily steeper. If it didn't level soon, they'd have to get off and walk the horses.
They were just beginning to contemplate that possibility when a reverberation unlike any other began near the top of the mountain range. At first they both thought it was thunder and paid little attention, but the sound continued unabated for a few moments before the mountains actually started shaking. By that time, both riders recognized the noise for what it was – a rockslide. They were caught – there was nowhere to go. All of the debris and sediment one could imagine started bounding wildly down the mountain until the stones and pebbles turned into rolling boulders.
Doc was the first to be felled by the mountain's disintegration. A large boulder crashed into a pine tree and split it in half; as it fell the shaft knocked Doc off his horse and rendered him unconscious, possibly saving his life. Bart's horse tried to wheel out of the way and fell, taking Bart down with her. Another crushing boulder hit the gambler full force in the back, plunging him forward with the smaller tree branches and rocks being thrown down the mountain. He fell and rolled with the dust and debris, breaking his shoulder when he landed against a tree that was too big to be uprooted. He kept on falling, twisting this way and that, unable to grab onto anything to stop his descent with the rest of the mountainside.
Already disabled due to the shoulder injury, he was tossed around like so much trash. He screamed in pain when the radius and ulna in his right arm snapped; he could hear the bones as they broke. Nature stepped in and took pity on him, slamming his head into a large rock and knocking him unconscious. He continued to roll and bounce downhill, turning him upside down and back over, breaking his collarbone and three ribs, then fracturing his right foot. The rockslide swept him on down the mountain, hundreds of yards past the body of his horse. It finally deposited him in a large gully that ran next to the tree line, almost entirely obscured by broken branches and debris.
Sometime after the boulders stopped spinning and bouncing Doc's horse made its way back to the gunslinger and waited for him to regain consciousness. Because Doc hadn't rolled as far as Bart and had avoided most of the rocks and boulders coming down the mountain, the only thing broken was his left arm. He was going to be black and blue from head to foot, but he was relatively unscathed otherwise. When he finally started to emerge from the stupor the tree caused the first thing he thought of was his traveling companion and he yelled "Bart!"
There was no answer from Bart, but Doc's horse whinnied. The gunman slowly and carefully succeeded in getting on his feet, realizing quickly that his arm was broken. Somehow he managed to pull himself up on his mount, his arm hanging limply at his side, and they made their way at a relative snail's pace down the mountainside. About fifty feet away Doc spotted Bart's horse, lying dead under several large boulders and a tree. There was no sign of her rider.
Holliday clung to his horse with his one functional arm and yelled again. "Bart Maverick!" The only sound on the mountain was pebbles and stones rolling down the hill. His arm was killing him, and his entire body had begun to throb with the beating he'd taken. The only way to rescue his friend, if he was still alive, was to leave and bring people back to search for the missing man. Doc continued back down the mountain, examining everything he could see for any signs of life. There were none.
As Doc tried to make his way back to civilization, Bart lay broken and unconscious in the gully. He stayed that way for what seemed like hours while Doc rode to Apache Junction and gathered a search party to go back out. The doctor there took one look at his arm and declared that he wasn't going anywhere on horseback if he ever wanted to use that appendage again, so Doc was forced to explain to the men participating in the rescue mission approximately where Bart was the last time he'd been seen.
Some ten or fifteen men made the trip back to the Superstition Mountains and searched the area Doc described. They found Bart's horse, along with his hat, and removed his saddlebags from the corpse. They searched everywhere a man could possibly have gotten to, all with no signs of life. And then they searched some more.
The group stayed out well past dark, calling and checking in every crevice and crack in the earth they could find, all to no avail. Finally they were forced to give up the quest and go back to town. When the search party returned empty handed Doc made them promise to resume the next day and look again, knowing full well that the hunt was probably useless. He had the presence of mind to have one of the men send a telegram to Montana, advising Bret there'd been an accident and to come to Arizona post-haste. The doctor wanted to give him something for the pain but Doc asked for and got a bottle instead, then slowly made his way back to the hotel. When he pulled out his wallet to pay for the room he realized that he still had Bart's identification, along with his saddlebags, and he went quietly to his new room and proceeded to get exceedingly drunk to numb the pain. When he couldn't physically feel the hurt any longer, he still felt the mental anguish, and Doc Holliday wept for his lost friend.