“Oh, I doubt very seriously that either one of the Gallagher brothers will be in the gang that attacks the track- laying crew.”
Fish asked, “Then what the hell are we doing here?”
Longarm looked at his friend. “Cutting down the odds, Fish, cutting down the odds. The real play, I feel, will take place this afternoon. The one thing that we have to try our best to do is to wipe out every man in this raiding party. I don’t want a soul, if it can be helped, getting back to the strip or to Quitman and getting back to the Gallagher brothers. I assume you are still the shot you once were.”
“I reckon that I can handle my end. That is, if that joy juice don’t blow us into small pieces.”
“Would you quit worrying about that nitro? It ain’t blowed up yet.”
Fish said, “And we won’t know when it does. I suppose you’re not worried.”
“Of course I’m worried. I just don’t see the point in talking about it all the time.”
“I think you’re scareder than I am.”
“Dammit, Fish, shut up. Get ready. Get your weapons and your ammunition laid out. My God, we’ve got a fight coming up here, maybe. Try to act like you know what you’re doing.”
It was good daylight when the train crew and the workers dismounted. The workers went about their business preparing the roadbed to accept new cross-ties and then new rails. Longarm noticed that the engineer very carefully kept half-steam up in his boiler. Longarm could faintly hear the chuf-chuf of the engine, and he could see small white puffs of smoke and steam rising from the smokestack. The workers seemed to only have half their eye on their job. The other half was directed toward their east, where they expected the raiding party to appear. Longarm calculated that where he and Fish were positioned was about half a mile further east than where the workers were. If he didn’t allow the bandits across a line drawn from the butte perpendicular to the line of the train, he didn’t figure there was any danger to the workmen.
After a while he suggested that Fish go down and check on the horses. He said, “I don’t figure there’s any water around here, although that crew might have enough. Why don’t you cinch them both up and ride over and see if you can get some water and any kind of feed that they might have. You might also see if you can fetch a fresh bag of ice.”
Fish said, “I’m for that.”
“Then I reckon when you bring the horses back into the grove of trees that you might leave them saddled and bridled.”
“You mean in case we need to get out of here in a hurry?”
Longarm looked annoyed. “No. In case we have to give chase.”
Fish said, “Oh, yeah. Nothing I’d like better than to give chase to about two dozen heavily armed bandits.”
“Go on down, you skinny bastard, and see to those horses and make short work of it. It’s getting on up into the day. It must be around seven-thirty now.”
“I’m on my way.”
While Fisher Lee was gone, Longarm carefully opened the tops of the canvas ice-filled sacks. He brushed away the top layer of the chopped ice. Halfway down in each one he found two ice-filled oilskin packets. With great care, he drew one out. It was dripping ice water. He opened the flap and looked inside. Nestled inside their private bed of crushed ice were two very innocent-looking small glass flasks full of clear white liquid. It was, he thought, a very nice arrangement that would allow him to take the nitro out a packet at a time, with two vials in each packet to use as needed.
He carefully replaced the oilskin packet back into the slit that the solidifying ice had created. The ice had not melted as much as he’d thought it would. It appeared to him that both sides were at least three-quarters full. He closed the sacks up and then looked at Pedro.
Longarm said to the burro, “Pedro, I’m sorry. I ain’t got a thing for you. No water, no feed, no hay, nothing. Unless you want to eat rock, there’s nothing.”
The patient animal, who didn’t seem to have moved an inch the entire night, looked at him with those big sad brown eyes and flicked an ear in recognition of Longarm’s words.
Longarm said, “I wish most folks that I work with were as easy to work with as you are and as easy to please. Pedro, you’re a credit to the U.S. marshals service.”
He went back to the row of rocks along the edge of the ledge and looked as far as he could to the east. The terrain remained empty. In the still air, he could hear the men grunting and the scrape of the shovels as they prepared the roadbed in the rocky, sandy soil. Soon, they would start laying cross-ties, and after that would come the rails. He wondered what time the raiders would come.
In a few minutes, as he watched, he saw Fisher emerge from the top of the trees and head toward the train. It was amusing to see the workers look up, stare for a moment, drop their tools, and then carefully make their way quickly back to the engine. Even the engineer, who had been idling along the drive wheels, oiling this and that, immediately went up into the cab.
As Fisher neared waving his hat, they saw that it was just one man. Perhaps they had been told to expect some protection, perhaps they had not. At any rate, they seemed to receive Fisher without too much alarm. Longarm watched as Fisher dismounted and talked with the engineer and a member of the work crew who Longarm took to be the foreman. Finally, four men jumped up on one of the flat cars and wrestled down a big barrel. The way the horses crowded around, he could tell It was water. He didn’t know if it was the men’s water, but the horses didn’t care. Unfortunately, there was no feed to be had, but after a while, one of the men came out of the coal tender lugging a canvas sack. He and Fisher arranged it over Longarm’s saddle and then tied it in place. Longarm took it to be the extra ice he’d asked for.
After some more talk, Fisher wheeled and brought the horses back at a much slower pace. He disappeared from Longarm’s view as he came around the back side of the butte. The one thing that had Longarm puzzled was that Fisher had somehow acquired a bucket of something heavy. He was carrying it in his right hand and reining with his left. Longarm assumed that sooner or later, Fisher would let him know. He also had a quiet smile to himself at the frustration of his friend when he, Longarm, had managed to win back most of his money. He’d even told Fisher, “Listen, if you sit there long enough, I’ll not only have all my money back, but all of yours too.”
