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.
The gal said her one overnight bag had been checked through to Deming and that she figured she might as well pick it up from their depot once she got there.
Longarm said his prisoner had no baggage, and allowed he’d trust the same railroad with his own light baggage, seeing they’d all be going to the end of the line shortly if Doc Wolfram could do something for Harmony Drake’s indisposition. He felt no call to discuss funeral arrangements in front of any man before he was sure they’d be needed.
So with Drake allowing that he was starting to feel better, thanks to all that ice, or Maryland Rye, they got him out on the car platform by the time their train rattled across a trestle spanning a wide dry wash and hissed to a stop on the far side, with a handful of window lights watching them from the low starlit adobes of the desert hamlet.
Some dirtily lit figures commenced to drift toward them as Longarm and the gal helped the gimpy Harmony Drake down the steps to the trackside gravel. Sister Ilsa called out for help in getting a mighty sick man over to Doctor Wolfram’s place. After some buzzing back and forth, one of the hands allowed in a friendly tone that he knew who they were talking about. So it seemed as if they all wanted to help as the conductor up on the platform yanked his bell cord and the night train proceeded onward up the line.
Longarm asked which way they were trying to herd his sick prisoner, seeing they seemed to be milling nowhere in particular, even with the tracks cleared and nothing blocking progress in any fool direction.
Then somebody drove another night train right against the back of Longarm’s skull, and he just had time to gasp, “Gee, Doc, I thought she was a nice gal,” before this inkwell opened wide and swallowed him lock, stock, and barrel.
Chapter 2
