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An Honest Account of the Death of Johnny Ringo
By Doc Holliday
The saloon doors swung open. Above the rowdy music and raucous laughter, an ominous sound reached our ears: the slow, deliberate "chink, chink" of spurred-and-booted feet stalking across wood plank floors, drawing ever closer.
"Howdy, Marshall," said Johnny Ringo. A sneer curved his overly sensual lips, belying his genial words. "What you drinkin'? 'S on me. Barkeep, pour our good sheriff another milk." He laughed then, in a tenor as manic and chilling as a soul should hope to never hear. The murderous gunslinger was a handsome man, though; I conceded him that, albeit he was destined to never again expend his manly substance on pretty Miss Carrie, who presently screeched out a bawdy song vis-à-vis her nightly business ventures.
The brooding man whom Ringo addressed slouched indifferently against the bar. Tombstone's sheriff and my good friend, Wyatt Earp, grunted. He pushed his shot glass across the polished bar surface. Barkeep poured him two fingers of milk. Earp tidily groomed his thin, dark moustache before sipping the vile stuff with as much politesse as any woman. For making public note of such a thing, however, a man might get himself killed.
I downed my bourbon in one swift gulp and pushed my cup across, as well. Barkeep handed me the whole damned bottle. "Thank you, Sir," I said. "Put it on his tab." I inclined my head toward Ringo.
"Why you--" Ringo barely laid his fingers on his gun before I had my revolver unholstered and aimed straight between his wild, ice-blue eyes. Forthwith, the piano player ceased his hammering, Miss Carrie uttered one last screech, and silence descended over the heretofore-boisterous saloon.
"You, Sir, are temptin' me mightily to look for an excuse to blow a hole clean through that empty vessel you call a head."
At this pronouncement, patrons dove under tables and shielded themselves with chairs and any such accoutrement to which they could lay hand.
Ringo's hand moved and I squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, a third time for good measure. The harsh scents of fear and gunpowder pervaded my nostrils. Ringo jerked with each shot. Dark red liquid sprayed forth as, one after another, the bullets exploded through his brain.
He slid to the floor as his life's blood bubbled and frothed from his mouth, ears, and the supplementary holes in his heinous head. I holstered my pistol and poured a generous drought of bourbon into my tin cup, which had never departed my other, idle hand.
Earp raised his glass, half empty now of the repulsive milk. With a shudder, I tapped my cup against his glass. Then, Earp slowly turned himself about on his elbows and observed Ringo's lifeless form. "Vermin," he said. "Much obliged, Doc."
He jerked his head toward Ringo's body, summoning forth two strapping cowboys who then dragged the expired villain away.
I often wonder, now in my later years as I lie slowly spewing forth my own life's blood to this cruel consumption (which has not taken me quickly enough to suit), if Miss Carrie mourned Johnny Ringo. She was but a prostitute who, gladly and with great enthusiasm, gave womanly comfort to all manner of men including myself and, I daresay, Wyatt and his brothers. She left town, however, one week after Ringo's death. Some say Miss Carrie changed her name and thenceforth commanded as ruthless a gang of outlaws as yet defiled our land, only to end her life on a rope in Mexico.
Do we not, then, each pay the debts of our souls in this lifetime?
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The above scene and the character called Miss Carrie are fictional.
Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, two legends of the American West, really existed, as did their association in Tombstone, Arizona with each other and John Ringo, a feared gunslinger and outlaw of the times.
Wyatt Earp passed away in 1929, aged 80, having, amazingly, never sustained a bullet wound.
Tuberculosis finally took the life of John Henry "Doc" Holliday, a well educated, but volatile, Georgian, in 1887. He was 36.
It is not known by whose hand John Ringo died. His body was found in July 1882, a single bullet through the brain being the apparent cause of death. It is highly doubtful that either Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday killed him, although I surmise neither mourned his passing. During their mutual time in Tombstone, the three men had run-ins aplenty, with and without guns. In addition, there exists the likelihood of tension between Holliday and Ringo over a woman, Holliday's wife, "Big Nose Kate".
Sources:
Tefertiller, Casey. Wyatt Earp The Life Behind the Legend.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997
Tefertiller, Casey. "Dangerous Charm: John Ringo of Tombstone." WildWest February 2000: 38+
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This was written in response to Micke Jinks' historical fiction challenge.
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