Chapter 15

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the white square of linen in his hand.

Only it was no longer white but a messy patch of red and white as it was covered with the blood from his mouth spilling out after he had a bad spate of coughing as he woke up from a restless sleep.

He looked at the almost empty bottle of whiskey on the side table.

It bore mute testimony to his broken vows of abstinence regarding staying away from booze.

The sounds of the street wafted up to the partially open window and he wondered how much time he had left on the earth because his affliction was on a downward spiral with no chance of improvement in the near future.

He took out a paper to wrap a new smoke and dropped it on the floor because he knew it was another nail in his coffin.

The thought of coffee churned his stomach and he quickly dressed because he didn’t want to die with his body not decently dressed for the internment. Besides, he had an unexplainable fear of dying with his boots off like some old loser with no spirit left in his soul.

Doc cleaned his guns not missing the smoke or the coffee or the whiskey that made up his trio of sinful broken vows. He smiled as he thought about the females in the other room because he knew that was a vow he would never consider worth the keeping.

He paused in his cleaning and read the letter from Wyatt telling him that he and his brothers would be visiting soon with an intent to take up the law enforcement chores of the territory.

Doc knew the criminal element was thriving in the town and he wished the Earp brothers well in their efforts to dispatch all the outlaw element to the depths of hell.

The sight of the bright red blood on his pocket hanky brought him full circle back to the doctor’s warning in Saint Louis that he needed to avoid all stress and find a better climate to live his waning days.

Doc knew the booze was bad for him, but he was addicted to it as much as he was to a deck of cards and the feel of a fast woman’s flesh squirming under his greedy weight.

He had reached a point in his life where he didn’t care if he won or lost in a game of chance. His goal was to risk his life and his fortune on the turn of a card or claiming a sweet pussy for his own tingling pleasure.

The whiskey was a curse and that was a fact.

His mama was a strict religious woman and instilled in him the need to always treat women like they were ladies even if they were lacking in manners or innocent attitude.

His Kate was certainly no lady, but she melted in his arms when he treated her like a Queen.

Now he was associating with the scum of the earth, gamblers, whores, and gunmen with little mercy and no souls.

They were back shooters, and thieves.

He knew he could not trust one of them, but the Earp brothers were different. They had a high moral code and had married decent women staying far away from the dirt and grime of the immoral west.

In his younger years, he had been a decent man with good manners and a pleasant smile for all acquaintances and business associates.

He finished cleaning the guns and thought about his recent run in with the drunken cattle rustlers. They had broken all rules of the game of poker and incurred his wrath with a shocking display of flashing gunplay. He dispatched all three of them to boot hill in a wooden coffin paid personally by him. He assumed the responsibility because it was his hand that brought them to their ill-fated demise.

He knew he was in the right and it was according to the code of the west, but he still felt a sense of remorse because they were much younger than him and their crude humor and wild attitude had simply rubbed him the wrong way.

He read the message from the senior Earp brother again and in between the lines, he discerned an urgency to be prepared for action.

Deep down inside, he felt that was the best solution for him to make his exit from this world of doctors with frowns on their faces and empty whiskey bottles standing on a crowded table in mute testimony to his weakness in keeping his vows.

Still, he would miss burying his long, hard dick in female bottoms and juicy slits making them squeal like little piggies when he gave it to them hard. He especially like giving his carnal blessing to the high born ladies with a finely refined pretense of being a proper lady. They never failed to arouse his libido and force him to mount them like an animal in heat doing what came naturally to all humans at some time in their life no matter how sordid or boring.

He pulled the carpet bag out of the closet and removed the scatter gun that he had used in the war for close-up dirty work when the odds were overwhelming. He had been saving it for the day when his eyesight was failing, and he needed a wide depth of field for his molten lead to clear a path to final redemption.