Mrs. Higgins had picked up the cartridges. She said, “I’ll clean these right up and do what I can for your guns. But hadn’t I better bring you your eggs and milk first?”
Longarm slumped back on the bench. “Yeah, I reckon. Faster I get it down the faster it will help me get some strength back. But what I’d like to do is get out back and pump a bucket of water and douse myself down. Don’t know if I got the strength, though.”
Mrs. Higgins said, “Why, I can do better than that. Why don’t you go in there and get in our Sears and Roebuck galvanized bathtub and turn on the tap from that pipe that runs up to the cistern on the roof. You can be resting and soaking the heat out of your poor body while you are at it. And you don’t even have to take your clothes off. Maybe yore boots. Wouldn’t want to get them wet. And I can bring you your milk and eggs right there and you can rest and soak and eat all the same time.”
“Sylvia,” he said, “that’s a damn good idea.” He heaved himself to his feet, doing it quickly to catch his body off guard. For a second he stood swaying, the room moving around him. He still had the sensation he was running. He stood a moment until he was certain he wasn’t going to fall, and then followed Mrs. Higgins through their private quarters and back to the curtained-off bathroom and its bathtub.
There was a little rubber plug in the bottom of the tub. Mrs. Higgins put it in place, saying that they just let the tub drain out on the floor and then the slope of the floor took it outside. She turned the tap and slightly brownish water began running into the tub. He sat on the edge and took his boots off, relishing the idea of cooling off his still-overheated body. The tub wasn’t all that deep, maybe two feet or a little more at its lowest point. But it curved up toward the other end to make a backrest where you could lean back and put your legs out straight and kind of soak the lower part of your body. But since the tub wasn’t much more than four feet long, he reckoned if you wanted to soak the upper half of yourself you’d have to slide down and kind of put your legs in the air. It wasn’t all that wide either, at least not down toward the bottom, and he wasn’t sure if his shoulders would fit in the bottom.
But it was as good a way as any to refresh himself. He swung around and eased his body into the half-full tub, carefully keeping his stocking feet out of the water. By putting his feet on the top of the lower end he could slide down into the tub to where the water was halfway between his waist and his chest. It felt wonderfully cool. Mrs. Higgins brought him his glass of cool milk with the eggs and sugar mixed in, and he sat there savoring it, sipping it at first and then taking long drinks. All it needed, he decided, was a little whiskey to make it maybe the best drink he’d ever had in his entire life. Even with it only half drunk he could feel strength returning. All of a sudden he remembered the time. He put his hand in his right-hand shirt pocket and jerked out his watch. The time read forty minutes after four. He mulled it over in his mind. He’d actually made pretty good time on his run. Only an hour or less had passed since the good doctor had drawn his gun. He did some calculations in his head, though his mind was still a little groggy. If the mule team was making five or six miles an hour, that meant they would have gone on another five miles or so from where he had gotten off the stage. Figure he had been three miles from the station, that made eight miles. The team still had twelve miles to go to reach the next relay station, and that up a bad grade where they would more than likely slow down to something under four miles an hour. He had a chance. It wasn’t a good one, but if he could find something to ride that the mules could pull at a fast clip, he might just catch the stage.
He put his head back and stared up at the ceiling, reliving the run he had just made. He shuddered. He didn’t know how he’d done it and he’d never do it again, even if it meant a raise in pay and the right to every woman in Denver.
Lying back, he let his skin absorb the water. He doubted if his pores were -actually drinking it in, but he knew he didn’t feel so dried out, and it hadn’t been much more than a quarter of an hour ago when he figured he could have passed for a big chunk of beef jerky.
He finished his milk and eggs and set the jar on the floor next to the tub. He worked his body down as far as he could. He’d thought his shoulders wouldn’t fit the width of the tub, but it was wider than he’d thought. He lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think of how he was going to catch up to the stage. If he could just think of something he could hitch the mules to. It made him want to shake his head in disbelief that a place as out of the way as a relay station wouldn’t at least have a buckboard or a buggy, never mind a saddle horse. What in hell were the residents supposed to do if they had to get around or go for help or needed to borrow some sugar or salt from the nearest neighbors? Well, he could understand it from the stage company’s viewpoint. It kept your stationkeepers in place, but he didn’t think it was very humane.
A thought suddenly came to him. He let it lay for a moment, just floating around in his head, and then brought it forward and gave it serious consideration. Abruptly, he sat up and turned around and looked at the back of the bathtub, the way it curved up, like the prow of a ship. The foot of the tub was the same. It curved upward. He suddenly scrambled out of the tub, excited, dripping water all over the place. He could clearly see that the tub was curved upwards in all parts of it, including the sides. The only flat part was the very bottom, and it was only about two feet wide. There wasn’t a single angle to snag or dig into the dirt. He ran out of the bathroom, yelling. He shouted, “Mrs. Higgins! Mrs. Higgins!”
The matronly lady came huffing in from the front room looking alarmed. She said, “Marsha—I mean, Cust—I mean, Mr. Long, is something wrong?”
“No, everything is fine. Listen, I need to stay out of the sun as much as I can. Will you run outside and tell Herman to come and to bring his Mexicans with him.”
She stared at him. “Why, yes, of course. Is something wrong?”
He pointed back at the bathtub. “How do you get the water out of this thing?”
She said, “Why you just pull that little black rubber plug there. It will run out. The floor slopes to the back.”
“Well, would you please get Mister Higgins. I’ve got to get moving, Sylvia.”
She frowned slightly. “Now you’re sure you are all right? You had a good bit of that sun, you know.”
“I know I did, Sylvia, but I’m all right. I’m just in a hurry. And when you get around to it, I wish you’d fill me a big canteen of water and maybe put any bread or biscuits you got left over in a bag. Piece of ham or something to go with it.” She said, “I’ll get Mr. Higgins right away.”
Chapter 8
Higgins stood in the bathroom and stared at Longarm. He said, “You want to do what with my wife’s bathtub?”
“Use it as a sled, a kind of sleigh. It’s the only thing around here I can think of that will work. See how rounded it is on the bottom? See how the sides slope outward? Be like riding in a soup dish. This thing will go skimming over that flat desert faster than if it had wheels.”
