Dance with the Devil

by Victoria Wilcox

  So it was with surprise and relief that he learned he had a visitor the morning after his arrest. He’d been hoping that Thomas Miers, the friendly liquor dealer, would hear of his predicament and come to bail him out again. It wasn’t Miers who came to help him that January afternoon, however, but Dr. John Seegar.

  “You would have done well to have taken my advice and left Dallas permanently, Dr. Holliday,” Seegar said, and John Henry was too amazed at the sight of him to disagree. After that unfortunate incident with the Fort Worth gamblers, he’d never expected Dr. Seegar to speak to him again, let alone come to see him in jail.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Sir,” he said, reaching his hand through the cell bars to Dr. Seegar, but the older man just glared at him.

  “Don’t bother thankin’ me. I’m not here to pay your bail. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot in this jail cell until your trial comes up. I’m just here to make sure that when you are tried, you get acquitted. That’s why I’ve hired you a lawyer, one of the best in Dallas. Name’s J.M. McCoy, a personal friend of mine.”

  John Henry caught his breath. Having Seegar put up money for bail would have been one thing. Having him pay to hire a lawyer was a gesture he couldn’t comprehend.

  “But I don’t understand, Sir. Why would you do such a thing for me?”

  “It’s not for you, Dr. Holliday. I wouldn’t waste a penny on your behalf. I’m doin’ this for my own reputation. Because if you are convicted, everyone will have somethin’ to say about my choice of professional partners, and I haven’t worked all these years to build a practice just to have your criminal behavior destroy it. Well? Aren’t you even interested in knowin’ how I found out about your incarceration?”

  “I reckon someone told you . . .” John Henry said with a shrug.

  “Someone told all of Dallas,” Seegar replied sharply. Then he snapped open the newspaper he’d carried with him, holding it up to the bars for John Henry to see. “It’s all right here on the front page of the Dallas Herald,” and he read the awful news aloud:

  “Dr. Holliday and Mr. Austin, a saloon-keeper, relieved the monotony of the noise of fire-crackers by taking a couple of shots at each other yesterday afternoon. The cheerful note of the peaceful six-shooter is heard once more among us. Both shooters were arrested.

  “So much for your reputation, Dr. Holliday,” Seegar went on, sliding the newspaper through the bars to John Henry. “You have managed to make a fool of yourself, and that is a real shame. Because you are a fine dentist, the best clinician I ever saw. But you are also one sorry excuse for a man.”

  “But you don’t understand,” John Henry said. “I was just collectin’ on a debt. Charlie was my patient, up in Denison . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses, Dr. Holliday. I just want you to get out of town before you cause me any more embarrassment or my daughter any more heartache.”

  “Your daughter?” John Henry asked, looking up from the paper. “What’s Lenora got to do with this?”

  “Nothin’,” Dr. Seegar replied heavily. “Or rather, she should have nothin’ to do with this. But for some reason, she still thinks you hung the moon, and learnin’ of your arrest will break her heart. But I don’t guess you’d understand about that, bein’ so heartless yourself. My lawyer will be by to see you in the mornin’.”

  But he wasn’t heartless as Dr. Seegar had said. For if he were, his heart wouldn’t be paining him the way it was now, knowing he’d hurt little Lenora again.

  John Milton McCoy, Dr. Seegar’s lawyer, had come to Dallas from Indiana just two years before as a grief-stricken young widower looking for a fresh start. But his mourning was short-lived when a friendly correspondence with his late wife’s best friend blossomed into love, and John Milton found himself a married man again. And though he vowed to his new bride that he would use his legal profession to help civilize the plains of Texas, the economic depression had forced him to compromise his vow a little. With money short and collections slow in coming in, he was obliged to take whatever cases offered themselves—even that of a drunken dentist who had taken a couple of wing shots at a local barkeep named Austin.

  But if J.M. McCoy had qualms about taking on his case, John Henry had more doubts about Lawyer McCoy. Though he was a genial enough man, rosy-cheeked and round about the middle, McCoy hadn’t had much experience in the trial setting. He practiced real estate law, trusts and guardianships and such, and John Henry was going to need a good criminal lawyer to get him acquitted of the charges made against him— Assault with Intent to Commit Murder.

  It was all nonsense, of course. If he’d meant to kill Charlie Austin, he could have done it easily enough. He’d only meant to knock the gun from Charlie’s hand and put a scare into him, and he’d succeeded on both counts. But knowing he was innocent of the charge didn’t ease his mind any. As his uncle William McKey had told him once, there was a difference between what a man could prove and what he got accused of, and oft times the accusation was all it took to ruin a man’s good name. Though if the jury decided John Henry was guilty as accused, he’d have more than just his good name to worry about. The penalty for attempted murder in the state of Texas was two to twenty years in the State Prison—a prospect that left him downright scared.

  So while Lawyer McCoy put together the case, interviewing witnesses and visiting the shooting scene, John Henry spent two sleepless weeks in the drafty Dallas City Jail waiting to see what would come of it. And by the time his trial came up on the frosty morning of January 28th, he was worn out from worry and lack of sleep, and coughing from the cold so hard that he kept interrupting the judge during the proceedings. But that was the one bright light of the entire affair: Lawyer McCoy had managed to get his case before a new judge in town, one who hadn’t heard of John Henry’s earlier arrest and arraignment, so at least that much hadn’t gone against him.

  For all John Milton McCoy’s corpulent geniality, however, he turned out to be a formidable attorney. He knew the law and knew how to explain it to a jury, and when the panel of twelve men returned from their sequestered room, they brought a happy verdict with them: In the case of The State of Texas vs J.H. Holliday, the defendant was found not guilty.

  It was the best news he’d heard since coming to Texas.

  He still had his dental equipment, which he’d used in Dallas and then taken on the train to Denison and back, so he set up again in a cheap rented room and hung out his sign, hoping to draw business. But he still had the cough that had come on him in jail, as well, and a weariness that wouldn’t let go. Most days, he was too tired to do more than a few hours of work, and some days he didn’t bother opening his door at all, staying in bed to sleep off the lingering effects of what was surely another close brush with pneumonia. Come spring, he told himself, he’d be feeling better, once the winter chill had lifted and the days started to warm again. Come spring, he’d be back on his feet and busy at his practice again.

  But when March came with balmy days and April followed with signs of an early summer, his weariness remained and his work continued to suffer. He was making enough for living expenses and not much more, and the last thing he wanted to spend money on was a visit to the doctor for something as inconsequential as a cough and a little tiredness, until one morning when he woke with a tearing pain in his chest and a strangling gasping for breath and felt something like vomit rising up in his throat. But as bent over the china bowl on his washstand he saw that it wasn’t vomit, but blood coming up, bright red and foamy and filled with pus.

  “Oh God!” he whispered hoarsely, with hardly enough breath to say the words, “don’t let me be sick, please don’t let me be sick!”

  Then he started coughing and vomiting again, until he couldn’t talk, or pray, or even think anymore.

  The doctor sat behind a dark oak desk in his medical office, staring down at the papers in front of him and saying nothing at all. Behind him, a tall apothecary case was filled with medicine bottles, amber and
blue glass reflecting the golden afternoon light that filled the little room. He took a deep breath, then looked up at John Henry who sat across the desk from him.

  “When did these symptoms first start?” he asked.

  “A few years back, in Georgia. I had a little spell then and another one when I first got to Texas. But nothin’ like this . . .”

  “And when did the bleeding start again?”

  “Mornin’ before last. I woke up feelin’ sick, coughin’ up blood.”

  The doctor pushed his chair back and stood slowly, turning to face the apothecary case.

  “There’s a few medications we could try, of course,” he said, more to himself than to John Henry, “remedies that have some claim to usefulness. Most of them are just mixtures of whiskey, but they help with the pain, at least. And there are some medical men who claim a dry climate can be beneficial. Colorado is becoming quite popular with victims . . .”

  “But it’s just the pneumonia again, isn’t it? It’s just the pneumonia?”

  The doctor shook his head and turned back to face him. “No, Dr. Holliday. I don’t believe it’s pneumonia.”

  “Then—what?”

  “Consumption,” the doctor said lightly, as though the word had no weight at all, no heavy burden of death to drag it down. “Pulmonary consumption, likely the acute form. It’s a—fairly common ailment of the lungs . . .”

  “I know about consumption,” John Henry said quickly. “My mother died of it. But she was always weak, especially after the War. Surely, you’re mistaken . . .”

  But the doctor went on as though John Henry had not spoken at all.

  “We are still unclear about the mode of transmission, but the symptoms are quite well known. There is lack of appetite, loss of weight at first . . .”

  “I’ve always been thin,” he objected.

  “Then there’s the quickened pulse, the tiredness you’ve described, the night sweats. Then the coughing starts, just in the morning at first, but getting worse with time until the patient starts to bring up blood from the lungs.”

  “But I’ve had the pneumonia . . .”

  “The blood comes from cavitary lesions in the lungs, areas of infection that swell, burst, bleed, then scar over. Eventually, the entire surface of the lung is involved, scarred, leaving little viable tissue left for respiration. The patient . . .” The doctor stopped, cleared his throat, started again. “The patient—dies of asphyxiation, usually delirious at the end. There is no known cure. It is—always fatal.”

  “But I’m just a little sick,” John Henry said. “I’m a little tired, that’s all. If you can just give me somethin’ to clear up this cough so I can sleep . . .”

  “I wish you had come to see me sooner, Dr. Holliday, when I might have been able to do something. I wish you hadn’t waited so long . . .”

  The doctor’s words ran out into a long silence.

  “I can’t be dyin’,” John Henry said, as though arguing could change things. “I’m only twenty-three years old! I’ve just started out. I’ve got plans for my life . . .”

  “You can still have plans. You’ll have years yet ahead of you, if you take care of yourself. Consumption is a slow illness.”

  “A slow death, you mean?”

  “We all die, son. It’s how you live that counts, no matter how long you have. And if there’s anything at all that I can do . . .”

  “You can go to hell!” John Henry said, voice shaking as he fought against angry, anguished tears. “You can go to hell!”

  His father had taught him responsibility, drilling it into him from childhood, and only because of that training did he bother showing up in court for the one legal affair he still had to attend to: his trial for the year-old Keno arrest.

  It was the first case heard that morning of April 13th, and he didn’t even go to the expense of hiring Lawyer McCoy to represent him. He was guilty of the gambling and pled such, and took his ten-dollar fine without making a comment—though the Dallas County Sheriff had a word of caution for him as he received the payment for the fine and court costs.

  “You ought to have a doctor take a listen to that cough,” the Sheriff remarked. “Sounds downright unpleasant.”

  John Henry didn’t even reply.

  The Dallas First Methodist Church held choir practice on Tuesday afternoons, the sound of the singing carrying out through the open chapel doors like an invitation, but John Henry hadn’t come for the music. He was looking for a miracle, for some sign that what the doctor had told him wasn’t true. His mother had taught him to believe in miracles, in signs and wonders and the mercies of God. And as he took off his hat and found a seat on a wooden pew, the words of the old hymn seemed to ring right through him:

  Depth of mercy, can there be

  Mercy still reserved for me?

  Can by God his wrath forbear

  The chief of sinners spare?

  Salvation had always been waiting for him, willing to give him time—time for remorse, time to repent, time to sow his wild oats and wander a bit. Even after his greatest sin, God could be forgiving if only he sought forgiveness with a broken and contrite heart. That was the Gospel his mother had taught him and that he had always believed. That was the legacy she had left him in her testimony written down by the minister before she died: God was good, in spite of trials; God was loving, in spite of losses. God heard each heartfelt prayer and answered accordingly.

  But though John Henry had repented, though he had done his best to change his life and live according to God’s plan with only a few minor failings, he hadn’t earned salvation, but damnation. He had killed a boy and God was punishing him for it, a life for a life. There was no mercy, only justice, and the Lord would have His vengeance.

  He knew all about the consumption. He’d watched his mother die of it, the pain-wracked body and horrible bloody cough that tore her apart and wasted her away before his very eyes. His beloved mother, taken from him so young. His own life, being taken too soon. How could he have faith in such an unfaithful, vengeful God?

  “Damn you!” he cursed, and the choir’s director turned around and stared. “Damn you all! Damn your heaven and your hell and your pitiful, painful earth! Damn you all!”

  Then, before anyone could ask him to quiet his blasphemous words, he rose and strode from the church, turning his back on the music and the mercies of God both.

  There were other places where comfort came easier. Dallas was full of saloons and he would visit them all, getting so roaring drunk that he couldn’t feel a thing: not pain, not despair, not the anger that was raging inside of him. Damn the whole world for giving him life at all! Tonight, he just wanted to bury himself in a bottle of whiskey and never wake up again.

  And then came a faint memory of another confused and drunken night when he had stood in the dark with Mattie and recited Hamlet’s soliloquy:

  “. . . To die—to sleep,

  No more; and by a sleep to say we end

  The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

  That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation

  Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep . . .”

  To die . . .

  Everybody died sooner or later. He didn’t have to wait for the consumption to torture him down to his grave when there were other, more pleasant, ways to go. How much liquor did it take for a man to drink himself to death? How long before he stopped thinking altogether?

  He ordered a bottle of whiskey and poured his tumbler full.

  Chapter Five

  LLANO ESTACADO, 1875

  THERE WAS A SEA OF GRASS ON THE FAR WESTERN REACHES OF THE Texas frontier. There was a sky so wide it seemed to swallow up the earth. There was a land so flat that the moon lay down to sleep at night on the far horizon. There was air so dry it could suck the breath out of a man, or give him the breath of life again.

  There were parts of that year that he didn’t remember at all, like how he’d gotten himself from Dallas to a frontier town a
hundred miles west of the last railroad stop and how he’d ended up in bed with an ugly prostitute called Hurricane Minnie. The woman remembered more than he did, saying that she’d met him in a saloon owned by a man named Johnny Shaughnessey, who turned out to be a friendly Irishman who warned him that he didn’t hold his liquor well, then poured him a whiskey and gave him the lay of the land.

  Fort Griffin Flat, as Shaughnessey called the place, was the main outfitting point for the western buffalo hunts, with one wide excrement-filled main street and a tumble of shacks and saloons along a pecan-shaded bend of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River. Above the Flat, on a high bluff overlooking the river, was the military outpost of Fort Griffin, though just because there were soldiers nearby didn’t mean the place was orderly. The soldiers were posted there to keep the Indians at bay and protect the buffalo trail; the town was mostly left to its own devices. So with the nearest law at Jacksboro, seventy miles away, the Flat was as wild as any town on the frontier and as good as hell for a young man who’d meant to kill himself anyhow.

  He might have stayed there forever, awash in liquor and still trying to end his sorrows, if the Law hadn’t come along with a new sheriff sent over from the county seat of Albany. The sheriff decided to shine up his badge by cleaning up the Flat, arresting the gamblers and the prostitutes and collecting on their jail fines, and the sorrowful young drunk from Dallas was arrested along with the rest of them. In his former life, he’d have stayed around to answer the charges and make a show of responsibility for his actions. But what did responsibility matter when a man was dying? So as soon as the jail spat him out, he skipped town, taking the stage west from Fort Griffin and not caring where he ended up.

  And so he came to the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, the Americans called it, a thirty-thousand square mile stretch of emptiness where the Seminole and the Comanche lost themselves before the army could trail them to their camps, and even the great buffalo herds seemed to disappear into the red dust. It was downright spooky how that land of so much nothing could hide almost anything.