do with that thing?”
Chapter 6
Longarm picked up another stone and fired it high into the night sky, admiring the arc it made. He said, “Oh, I reckon to kill me a giant.”
“Hell, who do you think you are? David? Ain’t nobody around here named Goliath.”
Longarm said, “This, my friend, might be the most deadly weapon you’ve ever seen.”
Fisher shook his head slowly. “I’m sitting on top of a rock with a crazy man wearing a badge who’s got a kid’s slingshot, and we might have two dozen armed bandits coming this way at first light. Can you beat that? You know, for years, I have told people that my mamma didn’t raise no fool. I was wrong, because here I am.”
Longarm said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re still alive. I, don’t know how, but you are.”
“And another thing, when in the hell are you going to tell me what that ice is for? You plan on dumping it down this butte and freezing those folks to death?”
Longarm said, “I’m keeping something cold.” He had about decided that it was time that Fisher knew what his plan was. He had gotten this far, and Longarm was pretty certain that Fisher would stay. Fisher asked, “Exactly what do you need to keep cold?”
Longarm said, “Do you promise not to get nervous if I tell you?”
“Well, I don’t know what you could have sitting on ice that would make me nervous, unless it was that woman that you had in Taos. She sounds like she could use some cooling down. Yeah, I promise I won’t get nervous.”
“No matter what it is?”
“No matter what it is. I don’t think there is anything more that you could do or say to me in the history of our acquaintance that would make me nervous. I’ve been through the wars with you, Longarm, and I’ve been in some places that I swore that I’d never get into, and I got into them because of you, and I’m still here. What do you have in the ice?”
Longarm looked around at Fish so he could see his face fairly distinctly in the moonlight. He said, “Nitro.”
Fish blinked. “What?”
“Nitroglycerin.”
Fish made a sighing sound. “Are you telling me that you packed some nitroglycerin on the back of that burro all the way from Springer with me riding right next to him? Are you going to tell me that, huh?”
“Not if it’s going to make you nervous.”
Fisher swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing prominantly. He said, “You mean, on that banging, swaying, jerking, bucking train there was some nitroglycerin? That stuff that goes off if you even breathe on it wrong?”
“That very stuff. Nitroglycerin. Highly unstable. The secret is keeping it cold, Fish. Even then, there ain’t no guarantee.”
“Am I to understand then that sitting over there behind that boulder in those canvas sacks full of ice there is some nitroglycerin in there, not ten yards from where I am sitting?”
Longarm nodded. “Yes.”
Almost imperceptibly, Fisher began to back away. “You got just a little bit, right?”
“Not very much.”
Fisher was easing himself backward, using his hands to slide his rump along the rock ledge. “What do you mean, not much?”
Longarm gave him an innocent look. “Oh, eight ounces.”
Fisher’s chin slumped to his chest. He said, “Lord, I am ten yards from eight ounces of nitroglycerin and I’m here with a madman, a crazy man. Please get me somewhere else, a long way away somewhere else.”
Longarm said mildly, “I didn’t know you were a praying man, Fish. I’m right pleased to find it out. That just goes to prove that there is good in everything, even nitroglycerin. I might have gone on to believe you were a benighted heathen, and now I know better.”
Fisher glared at him. “Longarm, you are the low-downest, dirtiest sonofabitch that I have ever known in my life. You let me walk right beside, ride right beside, enough nitroglycerin to have blown you and me and all the animals to Connecticut, and now I’m sitting ten yards from it. Longarm, I’m scared of that stuff.”
“So am I. Anybody with a lick of sense would be scared of it.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not going to go over there and shake it, if that’s what you mean.”
Fisher gave him a sour look. “You know damn good and well what I mean. What are you going to do about it?”
Longarm shrugged. “I’m going to let it be. If I was you, I’d do the same. It’s nice and safe in that ice.”
“Yeah, it’s nice and safe in that ice, but what about when that ice melts underneath it and it falls?”
Longarm had not thought of that, and it sent a sudden chill through him. “There you go, Fisher, always thinking the worst. That nitroglycerin is packed on the bottom, the ice is on top of it, so it can’t fall. It’s carefully wrapped. The men that put that nitro together for us are mining engineers. They deal with this stuff all the time, so they know exactly what they are doing.”
Fisher asked, “Are you sure of that?”
Without the slightest idea that what he was saying was true, Longarm said, “Of course I’m sure. It was
