Death Has Its Price

Chapter 4 – John Henry Who?

"There's no other way to put this – he's just a mess." Doc Greeley was not one to sugar-coat the truth. So when he pronounced someone 'a mess,' they truly were.

"What did you find, Doc?" Gage asked the question, although Amy wanted to hear the list of injuries just as much.

"Broken collarbone, fractured shoulder, broken arm twice, God knows how many broken ribs, and a broken foot. Concussion, too. In other words, he's broken. Lucky to be alive – must have been right in the middle of that mess on the mountain this morning. Gonna be in pain for a long time. This isn't the first time he's been banged up, either. I found a lotta scars – bullet holes, knife wounds; been knocked around a lot for somebody so young. Any idea who he is?"

Amy wasn't thrilled to reveal their guests identity, but she wasn't going to lie to Doc Greeley and her father, either. She handed the wallet to the doctor, who looked at it, shook his head, and gave it to Gage. Her father took one look and threw it on the table in disgust.

"I want him out, now," Stanhope decreed.

"If you move him right now you'll kill him," Doc explained.

"Don't much care. Not gonna keep a stone-cold killer in my house. Around my daughter? No, sir. He's got to go."

"Daddy, we can't do that," Amy protested.

"Gage, you can't put the man out in the shape he's in right now."

"Doc, I won't have him here. He's got no compunction about killing, and he's got the morals of an alley-cat. Nobody here needs to be around that."

"I understand, Gage, but can't you give it a few days, just until he can get over the worst of it? He's not gonna cause much trouble, the shape he's in. I just finished patchin' him up, I sure'd hate to see all that work go to waste."

Gage Stanhope was silent for a few minutes while his daughter and the doctor waited for his decision. When he finally spoke it was with a firm resolve. "Alright, but just for a few days. As soon as he can be moved, Doc, I want to know. I don't want him here any longer than necessary. You both understand? There'll be no arguing with this decision." He stopped for a minute, then thought of something else and picked the wallet back up. "Let's keep this between the three of us. Don't need every damn fool gunslinger in the territory here to challenge the man. Agreed?"

Two heads nodded 'yes' in unison. "Thanks, Daddy."

Doc Greeley concurred. "Mighty Christian of you, Gage. I guarantee he can't give you any problems, the shape he's in."

"I'll hold you to that, Doc. Just remember to let me know when we can get him out of here."

Her father left and Amy turned to the doctor. "Is he really that bad? It could kill him to move him?"

"Amy, honey, I didn't lie to your father. It could really kill him to move him right now."

She looked at Doc Greeley thoughtfully. "Well then, we won't. But I don't think we should call him 'Doc.' Do you know what the 'J.H.' stands for?"

"Yup. John Henry. John Henry Holliday."

A smile spread across Amy's face. "Then I'll call him John," she declared.

XXXXXXXX

She sat with him for a while that night, curious about the man her father had called a 'stone-cold killer.' He looked so young and so innocent as he slept, moaning only once or twice while she was in the room. Doc had cleaned him up some and Amy set about finishing the job, wiping dirt and embedded pebbles from his face and neck. He never opened his eyes and she wondered how much whiskey her father had poured down his throat while he was conscious. Sometime after midnight she could keep her eyes open no longer and laid her head down on the edge of the bed. She didn't want to leave him entirely alone just in case he needed something.

Within minutes, she was sound asleep. She stayed that way all night and her father found her at dawn the next morning, stiff and sore but in the same spot. 'John' hadn't woken all night and Amy wasn't sure if that was a good or bad sign. Gage watched his daughter keep guard over the injured gunslinger and couldn't help but wondering what was in store for all of them. Amy had such a big heart when it came to animals, but she usually didn't take to people the same way. So it was a little frightening to him to wonder if that's all Doc Holliday was to her – a wounded animal. She sat up from the bed and yawned and he smiled at her paternally. She was so much like her mother. What if she wanted to be the one to tame the wild beast in the bed next to her? He shook his head, trying to banish the unacceptable thought.

"Amy, breakfast's ready. Come on now and get some food in you."

She finally looked up at him and a slow smile spread across her face. "Morning, daddy. John didn't wake up last night."

"John?"

She nodded briefly. "That's his real name, and that's what I'm gonna call him. You think that's alright? That he didn't wake up, I mean."

"I think that's normal, Amy, considering what all got done to him yesterday. I wouldn't be surprised if he slept all day today, too. Probably a good thing – all he's gonna find is pain when he wakes."

"Daddy?"

"Hmmm?"

"We did the right thing, didn't we? Saving him, I mean."

Her father sighed. "I hope so, honey, I hope so."

XXXXXXXX

For the next three days her time was spent mostly at the broken man's bedside. When he was awake or conscious, whichever it was, Amy did her best to give him water and whatever broth she could get down him. Most of his superficial bruises turned greenish, then purple, and slowly started to fade. She could stare at him for hours on end, wondering what kind of life he'd had before the rockslide. Was it as violent and dangerous as some said, or was that simply a lot of gossip?

Watching him lay there, so peaceful and innocent, she couldn't imagine life as touched by pain and misery as his had been. She was reminded of that too often, as the consumption that wracked his body caused him to go into great coughing spasms on a regular basis. Had he known any sort of peace in his life? Had he known love? Once she realized that his wallet was only that, a wallet, and not some live and vile entity of its own, she examined its contents more carefully. He carried more than twenty-five hundred dollars with him, and one lone photo – a faded picture of a beautiful blonde woman, tall and smiling. Nothing else. Who was she? A mother, a sister, a wife, or a lost love? She was dying to know, but that knowledge would have to wait.

Finally, on the fourth day after she'd found him on Canyon Peak, she discovered him awake and mostly clear-eyed. "Good morning, John, are you feeling any better today?"

His eyes followed her around the bed and he tried to speak. "John?" It was a question, almost as if he didn't know his own name. Well, maybe he didn't. He'd been called 'Doc' for so long that 'John' was a word he was no longer used to. His voice was weak and almost inaudible, but she heard him clearly.

"That's your name, isn't it? John?"

"Don't . . . . . . know."

"I won't call you 'Doc.' Your name's John. John Henry Holliday."

"What?"

Was he serious? Did he really not know his own name? "John Henry Holliday. 'Doc' Holliday. The famous gambler-gunslinger-dentist."

"What?" She watched him look at her, confusion and dismay written all over his face. "Me?"

"That's what your wallet said. We needed to know who you were, so we checked your wallet. It was inside your coat."

"Me?" he asked again and seemed genuinely disturbed.

"According to your wallet, yes. You had quite a bit of money in it, twenty-five hundred dollars, to be exact. And a picture of a blonde woman. Do you remember that?"

Now the dismay in his eyes turned into panic. "No. Holliday?" The same emotion settled into his voice. He didn't know his own name, she was sure of it. His jacket, or what was left of it, was draped over a chair. She walked over and removed the wallet, bringing it over to the bed. First she showed him the engraved name on the inside flap, then pulled out the photo and held it up for him to see.

"She doesn't look familiar?"

There was nothing even close to recognition in his eyes. "No."

Amy put the picture back inside the wallet and returned it to the jacket. She had nothing else to show him to convince him he was Doc Holliday. Maybe the best thing was just to talk to him and see what he did remember, if anything.

"You were caught in the rock slide on Canyon Peak when I found you. Do you remember why you were there?"

There was hesitation and doubt in his answer, like he wasn't sure if he remembered or not. "Going . . . . . going . . . . . . don't know."

"You were going somewhere? To Junction Flats? Mountain City? Fort Apache? Do those sound familiar at all?"

"No."

She sat down in the chair by the bed. Something about the way she sat, or the way she looked, or just the fact that she sat at his bedside, triggered some kind of memory and he struggled to say something. "Rrrrr-rrrrr-rose."

"Rose?"

"Yes."

"Who's Rose?" she asked John.

Again there was confusion, frustration, and doubt in his answer. "I . . . . . .don't know." Slowly his eyes closed, and she didn't know if it was too much for him all at once – her questions and his inability to provide answers. She sat quietly at his bedside until his soft breathing told her that he was once again asleep. She waited for a few minutes more and then got up from the chair and walked into the main room. Her father sat at the table with a cup of coffee and watched her as she came in.

"I wish you'd stop going in there, Amy. No good can come of it."

"He doesn't know his own name, daddy. How can you not know your own name?" She sat down at the table and put her head in her hands. "What must that be like, to wake up in a strange place, with people you don't recognize, in a lot of pain, and not know what your own name is? Can you imagine that?"

Her voice was so sad, so filled with compassion for the killer that for a moment even her father felt sorry for the man who didn't know who he was. Then Gage Stanhope remembered all the stories, all the tales of Doc Holliday and his reckless, needless killing of anyone who got in his way, and his distaste for the man rose up in his throat. "Maybe he's lying to you, Amy. Maybe it's all a sham, to gain your sympathy."

"Why? Why would my opinions matter to him? He doesn't even know my name. And he can barely talk when I ask him questions."

"Still, I'd feel better if you left him alone. Until he's well enough to leave."

Amy sighed and went into the pantry to pour herself some coffee. Her father sat at the table and knew that his daughter, his Amy, would not do as he asked and leave the gunslinger alone. And there was nothing he could do about it.