his head. He said, “Yeah. I can reach them. I just hope I know what to do at the time I’m supposed to do it.”
“You got everything?”
Longarm looked around. His guns and ammunition and food and water were aboard, as well as the little sack of food and the bottle of whiskey. He said, “Let me get in a quick drink before you turn them loose.”
“Better make it a good one. Might be the last you have for a time.”
Longarm took a hard pull of the bottle and then corked it. He laid it down beside him in the bathtub and then nodded his head. He had one set of reins in one hand and another in the other. He had the whip in his right hand. He pulled his hat on tighter and nodded. He said, “Take off the blindfolds.”
The Mexicans untied the hankerchiefs and whipped them away, stepping back quickly. For a moment the mules stood stock still. They both switched their ears back and forth and trembled, but other than that, didn’t move. Higgins said, “Shake the reins at ‘em. But gently.”
Longarm was about to do that, or thinking about doing it, when the off leader turned his head to the inside and walleyed the strange-looking contraption right at his heels. In that instant Higgins yelled, “Don’t let ‘em look back! It’ll spook ‘em. Use the whip!”
But it was too late. With a squeal of irritation from the off leader the team suddenly broke into a stampede. One second they were standing there, and the next they seemed to be at a dead run. If he hadn’t been holding the reins with both hands Longarm would have tumbled over on his back. As it was, it was all he could do to keep his balance and keep his hat on his head. He had reins in both hands and was set back against them as hard as he could pull, but it made the mules not the slightest bit of difference. Outside the bathtub the desert was whizzing by, and the tub itself was making a sound like bacon frying as it flew over the crusty sand and bits of grass and the occasional rock and cactus.
From behind Longarm heard Higgins yelling, “Rein ‘em in! Rein ‘em in!”
He wished Higgins was sitting where he was sitting, in the bottom of a bathtub with two runaway mules in front of him. He wouldn’t have been so quick to yell, “Rein ‘em in! Rein ‘em in!”
There was no reining the mules in. Fortunately, they were sticking to the stage tracks, so they were going where Longarm wanted to go, except they were going a little faster than he cared for. He was afraid they would play out before he caught the stage at the pace they were setting. But for the time being, he thought the best thing to do was just let them get their run out. Maybe when they tired a little they’d become slightly more manageable.
As they raced along he took stock of the situation. Looking back, he could see the station receeding rapidly in the distance. Already the horizon was cutting off Higgins and his two Mexicans at the waist, and in another moment they’d be swallowed up. All the stuff he had brought along was rattling around, but it seemed to be doing all right. It was a strange sensation to him to be sitting so close to the ground at such a speed.
The tub seemed to be pulling all right. As it raced across uneven ground it would sway and bump, but it was hitched too close to the mules to have much play, even on the single trace. Occasionally the tub would go over a rise or a clump of grass and actually get off the ground, landing with a bump, but mostly it seemed to stick pretty close to the ground, remaining stable and acting as he’d envisioned.
But it was bothering the mules. From time to time one or the other would take a wild-eyed look back at this monstrous thing that was dogging their heels and redouble its efforts. Finally, Longarm got comfortable enough to reach forward with the coachman’s whip and slap the mules on the cheek to keep them from looking back.
He knew he had to find some way to slow the animals down. Neither horse nor mule nor dog could run as fast as they were running for very long, and he figured he had at least fifteen miles to go to catch up with the coach. He started by bracing his boots against the front of the tub and pulling as hard as he could against the headlong flight of the mules. It made them bow their necks a little, but it didn’t slow them down. Their ears were still flicking back and forth in all directions.
Then they suddenly spooked to the right and started off to the east. The move caught Longarm so off guard that he almost fell out of the tub. When he regained his balance he saw that they were heading rapidly away from his intended track. He pulled hard on the rein of the near leader, trying to pull him back to the left, to the west, back toward the stage road. The result only got him a very grudging turn in that direction that might, if given enough time, bring them back on track just before they reached Phoenix. But he couldn’t wait that long. He reached forward and slapped the off leader on the right cheek. That brought quick results. The mule turned back to his left, taking his mate with him. Only they were turning too far. As they were crossing the northern line that Longarm wanted, he reached out again and tapped the near leader on the left cheek. The mules broke to the right. He kept that up until he finally had them back on the stage road and heading where he wanted them to go.
And it seemed as if they had slowed down. He gave a healthy pull on both reins, and the mules responded by settling back into a reasonable gallop. It was still too fast, but he thought they would slow down naturally as they tired.
He saw something ahead in the road, brown against the whitish sand. He doubted that it could be, but it looked like his gunbelt, the gunbelt he’d dropped when he’d started his run. If it was, it would give him a pretty good idea of how far he’d come and how far he had to go.
The brown spot turned into a gunbelt and came up very fast. The mules were on a perfect line, so Longarm did nothing to turn them. He leaned over the side of the tub as they whizzed by and reached down and scooped up his gunbelt. It was impossible to believe, and he didn’t think he would ever tell the story about the time he’d retrieved his gunbelt while sitting in a bathtub being pulled by a pair of mules across the Arizona desert. There were some tales you told and some you didn’t. Not if you wanted to maintain any sort of reputation as a halfway truthful person.
He got his watch out and looked at it. It was six-fifteen. He figured he’d covered five or six miles, maybe more. The mules had settled down to a steady lope and he figured they were making about seven miles an hour. That meant that if he didn’t come up to the coach in the next two hours, he wouldn’t catch them before they got to the station and got forted up. That would make his job a lot more difficult. Also, it would be starting to get dark in less than two hours, and the only way he had of finding his way was by the tracks of the stage, and he wouldn’t be able to see them in the lowering light. He settled down for the ride, grimly hoping the mules would hold out, that something would delay the coach, that he would catch them in time. He wanted Carl Lowe, but even more, he wanted Doctor Peabody, if that was his name, and especially Miss Rita Ann. He did not normally take a personal approach to his business as a lawman, but this time he was going to make an exception.
He sped on. The mules seemed to have adjusted to their roles as pullers of a bathtub, and were even responding moderately well to the reins. Without too much tugging and pulling he could keep them on the path whenever the coach tracks curved or went around a patch of rough ground. He dared not completely let go of the reins, but he was able to hold them in one hand while he used the other to have a drink of whiskey and a pull of
