Longarm and the Big Fifty, page 1
**skip**LONGARM AND THE BIG FIFTY By Tabor Evans Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 by Jove Publications, Inc.
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ISBN: 0-515-11895-8
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A Jove Book published by arrangement with the author Printing history Jove edition July 1996
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him … the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
SLOCUM by Jake Logan Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.
Chapter 1
The long, hot summer day had ended, and so Yuma was getting out of bed as Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long was finishing his supper in a stand-up cafetin across the plaza from the jailhouse. The fish pie was tempting, but he had chores to do and a train to catch. So Longarm, as he was better known to friend and foe alike, washed down the last of his hot tamales with tepid black coffee and settled up with the pretty Mexican counter gal, leaving her a dime tip to show he hadn’t ignored her batty eyelashes because he’d thought she was too fat. Then he paused by the newsstand out front to light a three-for-a-nickel cheroot and grimace down at the evening headlines.
As if folks along the lower Gila didn’t have enough to worry them, the fool Arizona Advocate was blaring, “APACHE OUT ON WARPATH!”
You couldn’t buy the Tombstone Epitaph around the central plaza. So there was no sweet voice of reason from old John Clum, the former BIA agent who’d given up educating Indians to publish his own newspaper for cowboys and such to read. The last edition of the Epitaph read by Longarm had explained how unlikely it would be for Victorio and his reservation-jumpers to raid west of, say, Apache Pass in high summer. It was scandalous to scare folks like that just to sell a few more copies of your otherwise dull newspaper.
President Hayes and his first lady, Miss Lemonade Lucy, had made it clear they expected all federal employees, including lawmen, to dress and behave like ribbon clerks or bank tellers. But since neither of them came out to Arizona Territory in August all that often, Longarm had packed his tweed frock coat and vest away with his infernal tie, and pinned his federal badge to the front of his hickory shirt lest anyone take him for a saddle tramp packing a .44-40 cross-draw.
It was still hotter than the hinges of Hell as he trudged across the dusty plaza. But somewhere in the night a guitar was commencing a lively hat dance and a young gal was standing on a trestle table to light a string of paper lanterns. Longarm didn’t ask or even wonder if they were fixing to have a fiesta or just a market night. Once the sun went down in Arizona, everyone felt overdue for some damned sort of a celebration.
Longarm had already done the paperwork at the jailhouse when he’d arrived that morning aboard the westbound Southern Pacific, so they had Harmony Drake out front and ready to go. Or out front in cuffs and leg irons, whether he wanted to go or not.
One of the Arizona lawmen who’d been holding the killer on a federal warrant for Longarm to pick up confided cheerfully that the prisoner seemed mighty sad for a sport who killed other folks with such a carefree attitude. “Old Harmony turned down both his dinner and a finer supper than he deserved,” the lawman said. “Says he’s feeling poorly. Reckon they told him how you crap your pants when they hang you and he’s hoping to hold down the stink.”
Longarm had never cottoned to gallows humor aimed at victims in no position to enjoy it. So he simply nodded at the seated prisoner, perhaps a tad younger and too over-dressed for the occasion, and said, “We’ll be leaving now, Mister Drake. I got us a coach seat aboard the night train to Deming. I’m sorry you have to wear those leg irons. But they’re what you get for escaping the last time anyone tried to transport you cross-country. We’ll be seated by a window and you may need that denim jacket as this desert air cools off after dark. But right now you’re sweating like a pig, and I reckon we’d best get you down to shirtsleeves before we leave.”
Earlier, Longarm had given the Arizona jailors the cuffs and leg irons the prisoner was wearing. So he fumbled the little key from the fob pocket of his tweed pants to unlock the cuffs as Harmony Drake’s rusty-sounding voice creaked, “I ain’t sweating because I feel hot. I feel like I’m coming down with something. Something serious as hell.”
Longarm helped the uncuffed prisoner out of his sweat-soaked though thin denim jacket as he calmly replied, “We have to lay over betwixt trains at Deming, just across the New Mexico line. If the cool night ride ain’t cheered you up, I’ll have a sawbones look you over before we head on up to Colorado.” Drake said he doubted he’d last that long. The local lawman who’d made rude remarks about his date with the hangman suggested he die on his way there and save everyone a heap of trouble.
Longarm snapped the cuffs back in place and draped the limp denim jacket over the shining steel links as he helped the condemned killer to stand up, quietly saying, “The train depot ain’t but a furlong or so to walk. Do you reckon you can make it without help?” Harmony Drake said, “Not hardly,” and sat back down, adding it felt as if someone had drained all the juice out of his legs and that he had a bellyache as well.
Another local jailer snorted, “He’s gold-bricking you, Longarm. He ain’t sick. He just don’t want you to carry him back to that Colorado court’s jurisdiction.”
The thought had already occurred to Longarm. But even a convicted killer had been known to take sick like other mortals. So he got out his pocket watch, cussed it, and decided, “I could use some help from you gents in bearing him from here to that railroad platform.”
He could see nobody seemed anxious to leap at such an opportunity. So he fished out some smokes to distribute as he quietly added, “If he dies aboard the train, it’ll be all my misfortune and none of your own.”
So after they’d all lit up, they improvised a litter to carry the moaning and groaning Harmony Drake down the way, and cheerfully helped Longarm get him aboard the 8:15 eastbound.
In the time they had left while the engine took on water for the first leg of its desert run, Longarm cuffed his prisoner’s right-hand wrist to the arm of his seat against the south-facing window and gave him a cheroot and some waterproof Mexican matches, murmuring, “I have to ask the conductor something. Don’t go ‘way, unless you want a bullet where it might smart, and I’ll be back directly.” Harmony Drake said he didn’t feel like smoking. He asked if Longarm would mind removing his leg irons seeing he was secured to the seat and it felt better when he held his right knee up as high as he could get it.
Longarm had hoped the rascal wouldn’t say anything like that. He muttered, “When I come back. I know what you’re trying to sell me. I ain’t sure I’m ready to buy it. But just sit tight and like the old hymn goes, farther along we’ll know more about it.”
Then he strode up the aisle and into the car beyond, where sure enough, he caught the grizzled conductor flirting with a gal young enough to be his granddaughter.
Ticking the brim of his Stetson to the gal, Longarm curtly cut in to ask the older man if they’d be stopping to jerk water at the Gila Bend Indian Agency.
The conductor nodded and said, “East-or westbound, we always jerk water at Gila Bend. Why do you ask, Deputy?”
Longarm explained, “I’m carrying a prisoner back to Colorado with a bellyache. Leastways, he says he’s got a bellyache, with a fever. I thought I’d like to have the sawbones at that Indian agency take a look and tell me I’m just acting like an old fuss.”
The gal chimed in to say with a smile that she was not connected in any way with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but that she worked as a nurse out of the Deming Dispensary if he was in the market for her modest medical opinions.
He declared he surely was. So all three of them went on back to find Harmony Drake writhing on the floor between the seats like a sick wolverine with one paw caught in a trap.
The gal, whose light hair and coloring went by the name of Sister Ilsa Anders, stamped a foot and told him to behave like a big brave boy if he expected her to give him a proper medical examination.
Harmony Drake stared goggle-eyed, laughed more like a silly kid than a big brave boy, and asked if she cared to give him an improper going-over.
Longarm told him to behave, and got him back up on the seat as the train was pulling out of the depot with a mournful tolling of its engine bell. When Ilsa asked him to free the prisoner’s ankles, Longarm did so, and sure enough, Drake hauled his right knee up to hug against his belly with his free arm, gasping, “Oh, Lord, that feels much better!”
The ash-blonde per
She asked Drake whether he’d been having any chills as well as hot, sweaty spells. When he allowed he had, she made him stick out his tongue. Then she turned to tell Longarm, “It’s hard to be sure with not even a proper thermometer to work with. It could be nothing more than mesenteric adenitis, albeit he seems a tad old for such childish infections. It could be pyelonephritis of the right kidney, of course.”
Longarm stared morosely out at the window lights of the town they were rapidly leaving as he quietly asked, “Or couldn’t it be a mortified appendix, such as Brother Brigham Young just suffered up to Salt Lake City, ma’am?”
The conductor whistled, and allowed he could still stop the train if they wanted to get off.
Longarm was tempted. But then the gal who seemed to know more about such grim matters said, “There are a dozen less dangerous conditions that have the same symptoms, and he’ll do better, no matter what ails him, if you get him to a doctor at a higher and cooler altitude. The muggy heat down at this end of the valley is enough to make anyone with any condition break out in a sweat, and even if this is what I’m sure we all hope it isn’t, cooling that abdomen as much as possible is indicated.” The conductor said they had some ice up in the dining car.
Longarm asked him to go fetch some as he told his prisoner and the volunteer nurse, “We’ll put an ice pack aboard and see whether it’s better or worse by the time we reach Gila Bend. Unless it’s way better, we’d best get off there and stick you in that agency clinic, old son.”
Harmony Drake protested, “I don’t want to have that bellyache Brigham Young come down with and died, damn it! Can’t you cure me better than them Mormon medicos, ma’am?”
Sister Anders said soothingly, “It may not be anything half as serious as appendicitis, sir. Didn’t you just hear me saying there were a lot of other conditions with similar symptoms?”
Harmony Drake insisted, “My gut hurts like fire and you ain’t said you can make it better, pretty lady!”
The blonde regarded him with ill-concealed distaste as she told him he’d have more to worry about if the pain suddenly vanished for no apparent reason. The conductor came back with a colored dining car attendant who was packing some linen napkins and a bucket of crushed ice.
The conductor volunteered, “We have a vacant sleeping compartment up forward if you want to operate on him, Sister Anders.”
The young blonde sighed and replied, “If only I or anyone else had the skills, or the nerve. Surgeons have removed inflamed appendixes, in a hospital, under general anesthesia, and some few of their patients have survived. But the currently accepted procedure calls for bed rest with ice packs and quinine or other febrifuges that may get the patient’s temperature down before the inflamed appendix bursts!”
Harmony Drake sobbed that he didn’t want his damned appendix busting inside him. Longarm told him not to blubber up, and suggested they get to that compartment, strip him down, and ice his guts good.
The three grown men managed to move him forward three damned cars and change, with the gal fussing at them not to make any sudden moves, as other passengers gaped at them all along the way.
Then they had the condemned killer stretched out atop a bed quilt with his shirt open and his pants half down, despite his protestations that he didn’t know Sister Anders that well.
She told him to just hesh as she placed the ice pack in place. It was soggy as hell as the warm night air got right to work on that ice. But Harmony Drake blessed her as an angel of mercy who made Florence Nightingale look like a witch on a broom, and allowed that he was feeling a whole lot better already.
The blonde’s worried blue eyes met Longarm’s. She indicated by a slight motion of her head that there were some things it might not be wise to discuss in front of the children. Longarm had naturally cuffed one of his prisoner’s wrists to a handy brass rail of the bunk bed. So he simply nodded, and the two of them stepped out into the companionway for her to confide, “We should have gotten off back there when we had the chance. I know this line. There’s nobody that can help him at that Gila Bend agency if it’s his appendix. There’s nobody anywhere who’ll be able to save him if his appendix bursts before we get him to a real surgeon. What if we were to take him off at the next water stop and catch a westbound back to Yuma?”
To which Longarm could only reply with a sigh, “What westbound coming when, Miss Ilsa? They run passenger trains both ways at night across this desert in high summer. Next westbound for Yuma will just be leaving Deming with a good twelve-hour run ahead of her.”
She made a wry face and decided, “We’d be far better off holding out for Deming and hoping for the best then. They’d never be able to help him at the Gila Bend agency, and poor old Doctor Wolfram at Growler Wash just doesn’t have the sanitary facilities for any really serious operation.”
She turned to go back into the compartment. But Longarm reached out to stop her, saying, “Hold on, ma’am. You say there’s a surgeon at that flag stop way this side of Gila Bend?”
She nodded, but said, “Retired. Seventy years old and trying to grow olives, dates, or something on an experimental farm near that trading post and desert post office. We don’t want to get off there with poor Mister Drake and an inflamed appendix! They say Doctor Wolfram was a wonder at saving limbs when he was running that Union field hospital in his salad days. But even if he still has his old skills, the risky operation that may be called for is a whole new procedure and, as I just said, old Doctor Wolfram is running an experimental farm, not a modern hospital.”
Longarm slid the compartment door open to call in to the conductor, “Could you stop this train and let the three of us off at Growler Wash, pard?”
The conductor replied, “I command this fool train. I can stop it anywhere I’ve a mind to. But why would anyone want to get off at that cluster of ‘dobes around our railroad trestle in the middle of nowhere, after sundown, during an Apache scare?”
Longarm explained, “Sister Anders here knows a retired surgeon there.”
The prisoner melting ice on the bunk with his warm belly moaned, “I don’t want no retired sawbones touching my fair white body! I want to go to that hospital in Deming you were talking about before. Then I want another doctor to look at me before anyone cuts into me. For I have heard it said that opening up a man’s belly can be perilous as all get-out!”
Longarm didn’t answer. He read enough to know Drake was only repeating common medical opinion. Thanks to modern painless surgery, opening up the skull, chest, or abdominal cavity was now more possible. But it was improbable that the patient would recover from the almost sure-to-fester incisions and sutures. It would have been unkind to tell a convicted killer what the exact odds were. So he simply let the nurse assure Drake nobody was about to cut him open if there was any other way to keep his fool appendix from busting inside him like an overstuffed sausage. Longarm had read how some docs held it was best to open and clean out the ruptured guts as a last resort, while some few others were in favor of going in ahead of time, removing the swollen appendix in one piece before it burst, and hoping plenty of phenol and prayer as you backed out of the exposed innards would offer a better hope against infection.
Sister Ilsa allowed strong liquor wasn’t likely to put Drake in any more peril than he seemed to be in. So Longarm had that dining car attendant fetch them a bottle of Maryland Rye. The conductor only stayed for one swig before he had to move on with his ticket puncher, assuring them he’d let them off at Growler Wash unless they changed their minds. So Harmony Drake got to swallow most of the pint, with Longarm and the gal helping, as the train crawled on through a desert night with plenty of stars but no moon worth mentioning.
Longarm knew the flag stop the nurse had mentioned lay about half way between Yuma and Gila Bend. So he wasn’t surprised less than two hours later to feel the train was slowing down. He was on his own feet and had his prisoner dressed more modestly, uncuffed from the bunk bed, when the conductor came back to say they were fixing to stop and to ask about their baggage.
