The Fourth Horseman

Doc Holliday, friend of Wyatt Earp, emerges as a sharply defined, tragic character in Eickhoff's fifth book (after The Raid). John Henry Holliday tells his own story with just the right balance of guilt and grit, candor and clarity to make it believable and absorbing. Doc is a proud Southern gentleman whose life has gone sour. As a frontier dentist, he's a failure, more adept at card-sharping and pistol-slinging than he is at yanking molars. Afflicted with consumption, he coughs up his lungs in smoked-filled gambling halls from Dodge City to Tombstone, aware of his doom and caring for nothing but his honor. His deadly reputation brings few friends and no future, just more whiskey and more challenges to face his cards and pistols. He longs for a quick death, but can't take his own life (wouldn't be honorable). Instead, he provokes frontier thugs and bullies to do what he can't do himself, but when the gunsmoke clears, Doc is still alive. Only when Earp persuades him to ride off to the O.K. Corral does Doc's life take on meaning. Bad whiskey, bad women and bad luck carry Doc to his own destruction, but not before he squares accounts with some of the West's worst hombres in this engaging and morally ambiguous tale. (Feb.)