He thought of Rita and gritted his teeth. They were sandy. She had pulled a nice little trick on him with that last hug she’d given him. When she’d made as if to put her hand inside his jeans, she’d been reaching for a gun, all right, but it hadn’t been the one he’d thought. She’d taken his damn derringer. Well, he would have it back from her and no mistake. He didn’t know if he was more angry at her or at himself for the easy way she’d worked him. He reckoned she’d known he was a marshal almost from the first, Either she’d overheard the Higginses talking or she’d found his badge in his shirt pocket.
He kept running, gasping for air, the gasps coming closer and closer together. He couldn’t get enough air, and what he could was as dry and hot as a prairie fire. He wanted to stop. He desperately wanted to stop. His legs were starting to get heavy and his arms and shoulders were aching from carrying the weapons. You needed air to breathe and he wasn’t sure he was getting enough, or if he was, he was using up more than he was getting. The pain in his throat and chest was intense. He did not think he could go on, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other and taking turns switching the rifle and the revolver from one hand to the other.
He had to find something to hitch a team of mules to. A sled of some kind or a skid. Hell, maybe a bedstead. No, not a bedstead, but what about a mattress ticking? No, that would tear to pieces in the first mile. Maybe the Higginses’ little dining room table. Turn it upside down and he’d have the legs to hang on to.
He ran, turning ideas over and over in his mind, trying not to think of his body, which was crying out for him to cease torturing it. He tried thinking of lovers from his past, but that didn’t work mainly because he was hurting so bad that he couldn’t concentrate, but also because he couldn’t get the devious bitch Rita Ann out of his mind. With every stride he said in his head, “The day will come, woman, the day will come. The day with me and you alone and then matters will get settled. The day will come when you will rue you ever heard my name, much less met me, much less used me, much less overpowered me in a way no woman ever has before.”
But it was no good. Thinking of her made him angry, and he didn’t have any extra energy to waste on anything other than keeping his legs moving. His shirt was too tight across the chest. It felt as if it was constricting him, closing off his lungs. With the hand holding the revolver he made several attempts to rip open the buttons. He finally succeeded on the third try, but the effort was such that it made him stumble and almost fall. That scared him. If he ever fell he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up.
He tried to think about how he would organize matters once he got to the station, what he’d have Higgins looking for to make him some sort of conveyance that could be pulled behind two or four or more mules. Then how to repair the wires. But again, he couldn’t concentrate.
And where were the three gunmen? The three he’d sent packing. They had to be part of the plan, but they had not met the stage. Maybe they had gone ahead and taken control of the station the stage was bound for.
It was all too much. He finally quit trying to think at all. He ran. He ran with his head down, looking ahead no more than three or four yards. He ran, staring at the brown, ugly, sandy dirt. He ran with the sound of his own gasping sounding like the roaring surf he’d once heard out in California. He could feel his pulse beating in his temple. It was going like a trip-hammer. The only time it ever did that, as best he could remember, was in the heat of passion. Well, this sure as hell wasn’t the heat of passion. There was heat, heat enough to bake bread and fry steaks, but no passion.
Ripping open his shirt hadn’t helped. What was constricting him, he discovered, was not his shirt but the skin of his own chest. And underneath that his ribs were choking him. For the first time he began to think about failure. His body was telling him that it couldn’t go on, not for any reason.
Finally he got to the point where he said to himself that he would take just ten more strides and then he would stop. He counted them off in his head, his puffing and gasping coming faster than the count. When he reached ten, he told himself he would just go ten more and then definitely stop. But when that ten was up he made a deal with himself that he would run ten more strides and then he would look up. If he could not see some little part of the relay station he would stop. Maybe he would keep on walking, but he would stop running. He counted off the ten strides and then very slowly raised his eyes. Nothing but desolate badlands met his eyes. There was nothing in sight that looked like the hand of man had ever touched it with the exception of the coach tracks. He could stop now, he thought, with honor. He should stop. He was going to die if he didn’t stop. He wanted, he needed, it was necessary to stop.
He kept running. Now, burning his mind like an image that would never fade was every laugh that damn woman had had on him. Well, he would have the last laugh or he would die in worn-out socks.
He raised his eyes. There, directly ahead, he could see the buildings of the relay station. Not just the tops of the buildings, but all of them. All of them and the front yard. Somehow he had struggled up some sort of rise in the prairie and topped it and then there, right in front of him, was the relay station. It was downhill all the way to the front door.
But he was starting to stagger. His legs felt like they were made of lead and not really connected to him. Of their own choice they seemed to want to go wandering off in different and odd directions that had nothing to do with his intentions for them. He didn’t know how far away the buildings were. Between the film of exhaustion over his eyes and the shimmering heat waves, he couldn’t tell if they were a half mile away or a week. All he could do was keep on the way he’d come, putting one foot in front of the other.
He put his head down and went back to staring at the ground, guiding his steps by the tracks of the stage. His legs were getting limp and his shoulders were aching so bad from carrying the guns that he didn’t think he could stand it much longer. For some reason he had started breathing easier. It was as if something had finally burst under the pressure and he had a greater capacity to suck in the dry, hot air.
He raised his eyes, concentrating on the main building of the station. It seemed he could see someone standing under the porch, very near the front door. He looked down at the sand again and did not raise his eyes again until he’d counted off thirty strides. Yes, there was definitely someone there. If his vision had been normal he felt almost certain he would have been able to see the figure clearly. Then a distant noise seemed to come to his ears, like someone shouting. Through his squinted eyes he saw the figure come out of the shade of the porch and start toward him. It was Higgins. He was waving his arms and yelling, but Longarm couldn’t make out the words for the roaring in his ears and the sound of his gasping breaths. Then he saw that Higgins had broken into a kind of trot, running to meet him. He wanted to make some sort of signal, but he couldn’t raise either hand, not and hold on to his weapons.
Now he could see clearly that he was not that far from the station. Desert air was known for playing tricks on your vision, but he could tell it was no more than two hundred yards away. And Higgins was coming on, the distance between them narrowing. Then he finally heard Higgins’s voice. He was yelling as he bounced up and down in his peculiar run, “Marshal Long! Longarm! Mister Long! Marshal! What’s wrong? What happened?”
Longarm slogged along grimly, thinking that Higgins must have never been out of breath if he thought you could run and yell at the same time. At least after you’d run better than two miles under the desert sun. He was dying to know what time it was, but he couldn’t look at his watch. He’d had one look at it just before the doctor had pulled out his pistol. It was about a mile after they’d left the station. His watch had said forty minutes after three. But then he didn’t know how much time had elapsed before he’d finally gotten out of the coach. It couldn’t have been much, not a great deal more than five minutes. Perhaps ten at the most. He had to remember to look at the time
