Doc counts down the bank by lamplight, coat off, sleeves rolled. Kate works the ledger at the corner table, pencil moving fast — until the street door creaks.
A man slips in before she can bolt it. Hat pulled low, a borrowed coat wrong in the shoulders, a bandana hiding half his face. He moves too light on his feet for the part he's playing.
We're closed. And you can tell whoever sent you this house doesn't do business with —
He tips his hat back half an inch. Just enough. Kate's hand stops on the drawer.
William Bonney. Have you lost the very last of your mind, walking in here? There is a sheriff in this territory with your name on a warrant and a rope waiting on the other end of it.
Señora Horony... perdóneme la hora. Sé que no debería estar aquí. (forgive the hour — I know I shouldn't be here)
Kate says nothing for a beat. She understood every word of it, and he watches her understand it, delighted.
Habla bien. Mejor que la mitad de los hombres que nacieron aquí. (You speak it well. Better than half the men born here.)
Aprendí de las mejores maestras, en Silver City — señoras que me daban de comer cuando nadie más lo hacía. (I learned from the best teachers, back in Silver City — women who fed me when nobody else would.)
Se nota cuando alguien lo dice con el corazón, ¿no? Los gringos nunca me creen tierno. Usted sí. (You can tell when someone means it with their heart, can't you? The Americans never believe I've got a tender side. You do.)
Kate. Is our uninvited guest attempting to court you in a language I don't speak, or is there an actual purpose to this visit?
No offense to the lady's virtue, Doc — I'm not fool enough to try my luck twice under one roof.
The grin cracks. He winces, hand going briefly to his own jaw.
Truth is, I come needing you. Not her.
Kate catches the wince. Her eyes narrow — not suspicion now. Something closer to concern she won't admit to.
Needing him for what.
Tooth's gone bad. Two of 'em, maybe three, going on three weeks now. Can't hardly chew jerky without wanting to cry like a schoolgirl.
There's a girl. Down south. Family with land, real land, the kind that has its own name on the county map. She talks to me like I'm a man worth talking to, and I'd like to keep it that way a while longer.
Ah. So this isn't larceny or a lynching after all. This is vanity.
This is love, Doc. I'd call it the more dangerous of the two.
And you couldn't see a dentist in daylight, like a Christian, because —
Because there's a sheriff walking that street with a badge and a memory for faces.
Figured a man who deals faro till two in the morning wouldn't mind one more late customer.
Doc studies him a long moment — the fever-glitter in his own eyes matching something in Billy's, two men who've both made peace with dying young, just not tonight.
Kate. Lock the street door.
Sit. And if you flinch and put a hole in my ceiling, I will finish what the sheriff started.
Billy laughs, dropping into the dental chair like it's the safest seat in the territory.
Doc lays his instruments on the leather roll. Billy's jaw held steady in one gloved hand. Kate has settled back at her ledger, close enough to listen, pretending she isn't.
Hold still. You'll want to scream. Don't.
Easy for the man not holding the pliers.
I've held worse than pliers, and had worse held to me.
He picks up an instrument, studies the tooth, sets it down again — buying himself a second.
You know I rode out of Georgia a wanted man once. Younger than you are now. A card game, a man who couldn't lose gracefully, and a knife I didn't plan on using until I had to.
Billy's eyes go wide — as wide as a man's can with his mouth pinned open.
Din' know that, Doc.
Most don't. It isn't the kind of thing a dentist puts on his shingle.
A cough catches him mid-thought. He presses a fist to his mouth, waits it out, then goes back to work — a long, careful pull. Billy's whole body goes rigid, eyes squeezed shut.
A man who spends his whole life running from what he did will run himself into an early grave twice as fast as the men chasing him. You don't outrun the thing. You build something worth being caught standing next to.
He sets the instrument down. Wipes it clean. Doesn't look up.
I built a saloon. You're about to sit a horse three counties south for a girl with land in her family name. Not so different, in the end. Just different currency.
Billy goes quiet at that — as quiet as a man with a stranger's hand in his mouth can go.
For what it's worth, they're already writing about you like you're a story that's finished before it's begun. Don't let them. A legend's a fine thing to leave behind. It's a poor thing to live inside while you're still breathing.
A silence. Not heavy — companionable, the kind two men who've both made their peace with a short life can share without either one flinching from it.
My mother used to say something like that. 'Bout not living inside what other folks say of you.
Your mother sounds like she had better sense than either of us.
Does she have a name, this queen of the county map, or do I go on addressing her as 'the girl down south' for the rest of the evening?
Paulita. Paulita Maxwell.
And don't go wearing her name smooth just because you like the shape of it in your mouth, Doc. That name belongs to me.
Tell me she's worth a bullet wound and a three-day ride, Mr. Bonney, because that's what courting under a false name usually costs a man in this territory.
She laughs at things before I finish saying 'em. Like she's already three steps ahead and waiting on me to catch up.
Ain't never met a woman made me feel slow before.
God help you. That's the only kind worth chasing, and the only kind that'll make a genuine fool of you doing it.
He glances toward Kate — just once, before he can stop himself.
I chased one myself once. Made an absolute spectacle of it. Wrote her letters I'd be ashamed to have printed.
He showed up in Fort Griffin three separate times claiming business that did not exist, John Henry. There is no dental convention in a town that size. I checked.
You checked?!
A woman likes to know exactly how much of a fool a man is willing to make of himself before she agrees to be worth it.
And there you have the whole of it. Best advice I own, free of charge, delivered between molars: let her catch you being foolish on purpose. They forgive foolish. It's indifference they never do.
Kate laughs — a real one, surprised out of her, the ledger forgotten a moment. Billy laughs too, then winces hard, hand flying to his jaw.
Careful, Doc — nearly took my own tongue laughing.
Then hold still and let a reformed fugitive finish saving what's left of your smile for her.
“He came to us starving for two things most men in that territory never let themselves want out loud — a woman who'd think well of him, and someone to fix what was broken without asking what he'd done to break it. John Henry gave him the second thing free of charge, and something closer to wisdom besides, the kind a man only hands out once he's stopped needing it to save himself. I watched Billy the Kid, the terror of two territories, hold perfectly still in that chair like a child, laughing at a joke made at his own expense, and I remember thinking: I hope the world lets him keep this version of himself a good while longer. I already knew, somewhere under the hoping, that it wouldn't.” — Big Nose Kate
