“Yes!” Blake almost cried.
Because the doctor’s hands were all bloody and filled with needle and suture, Longarm had to reach into the man’s pocket and extract the bottle again, then uncork it and put it to Blake’s lips. The surgeon threw back his head and gulped four times.
“Ahh! Thank you!”
“Mind if I finish the bottle?” Longarm asked. “There isn’t much left and I could use some for my own nerves.”
“By all means, help yourself!”
Longarm emptied the bottle, but was immediately sorry. The whiskey was raw and burned a river of fire right down to his belly. It was about as bad as horse piss.
“Jezus!” Longarm choked. “Doc, you gotta start drinking something else. That stuff will kill you!”
“No one lives forever,” Thaddeus Blake replied.
“Hell of an attitude for a doctor to take,” Longarm growled.
Blake mopped his brow with the back of his sleeve and kept suturing. His work wasn’t the prettiest that Longarm had ever seen, but it was effective and the bleeding was already greatly diminished.
“How come you want to kill yourself, Doc?”
“Long, boring story that you don’t want to hear,” the man replied. “Who is this girl?”
“My friend.”
“Your lady friend shouldn’t have come to Bodie.”
“I know.”
“She’s going to live,” the doctor said, “but she won’t be able to travel for at least two weeks. Move her even by stage or private buggy and you would run the risk of these sutures breaking loose. It’s going to take her months to fully regain her strength.”
“She lives in Reno.”
“She should have stayed in Reno instead of coming to this hellish place,” Dr. Blake flatly stated.
Longarm felt terrible. Here he was being crowded on all sides by enemies, and now he had Megan to worry about. And if he were gunned down in ambush, what would become of her until such time as she was able to leave Bodie? Just the thought of Megan Riley being bedridden and at the mercy of this town was enough to make Longarm curse the decision he’d made to allow her to accompany him. What in heaven’s name had he been thinking of at the time?
“We’re done,” the doctor said. “I suggest we get her up to your room.”
Longarm glanced over his shoulder and yelled at the desk clerk, “We’re going to need a new room!”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Jefferson!” A minute passed and then the clerk hurried over with a key in his fist. “Room 206, but I’ll have to charge you for the damages, cleaning, and …”
Something in Longarm’s eyes killed the man’s wheedling voice. He dropped the new room key on the carpet and hurried away.
“I guess,” the doctor said, “that after we get this girl to bed you owe me some money.”
“I guess that I do,” Longarm said, “and I’m more than happy to pay your fee.”
Thaddeus Blake smiled and wiped his hands on a blanket. “I will stay with her for a short while,” he announced. “But I’ll need some more … medicine.”
“And you shall have it,” Longarm promised as he lifted the unconscious Megan up again and carried her back toward the stairs.
Chapter 12
“All right, goddammit!” Longarm swore as he barged into Marshal Kane’s office and caught the two lawmen off guard with their feet up on their desks. “Who tried to kill me and shot Miss Riley instead!”
Kane’s jaw dropped, and then the heels of his boots hit the floor as he bounced up to his feet. “Did someone shoot Miss Riley?”
“That’s right.” Longarm whirled to face Deputy Hec Ward. “You warned me to get out of town. Maybe you didn’t want to take a chance I’d call your play.”
Ward jumped to his feet, eyes blazing. “I don’t ambush women! I don’t have to ambush anyone, damn you!”
The outraged Hec Ward stabbed for his gun, but Longarm had anticipated the move and the butt of his Colt was already planted solidly in his fist. Longarm’s Colt was a blur as its muzzle locked on the one-armed deputy’s chest.
Ward froze, eyes bugging. For a moment, no one in the office moved, and then Longarm said, “I don’t like you, Deputy Ward, but I’m not convinced that you’re a backshooter.”
Longarm’s eyes snapped over to Marshal Kane, who had not moved a muscle. “Why don’t you and your trigger-happy deputy both raise your hands over your heads,” Longarm growled.
“Why should we?” Kane demanded.
“Because,” Longarm said, “I’m placing you both under arrest until I get to the bottom of things around here and restore some order.”
Kane’s face mottled with rage. “You’re putting me under arrest!”
“That’s right. As a federal officer-“
“As a federal officer, you have no authority in my town!” the lawman shouted.
“And as someone who admits he has been fired by the Bodie town council, you have even less authority here than I do,” Longarm said, gun slowly shifting from one to the other. “Now, I don’t know what is going to happen next, Marshal Kane. It’s entirely up to you. But I’m telling you to get your hands in the air and turn around slowly.”
“I’ll kill you for this,” Kane vowed between clenched teeth. “You’ve no right to arrest us!”
“I’ll worry about that later,” Longarm said. “Now turn around, put your hands over your heads, and if you reach for your guns or a hideout, I’ll not hesitate to split your skulls wide open with the barrel of my gun.”
“You sonofabitch!” Ward screamed as he turned around and obeyed the order.
Longarm had a few tense moments as he searched and then disarmed the dangerous pair.
“All right,” he said, “it’s time to get a dose of your own medicine.”
“You’re making a hell of a bad mistake,” Kane said.
“A fatal mistake.”
“This may come as a shock to you, Ivan,” Longarm said as he herded them both into the jail cell and locked the door, “but people have told me that before.”
“This time it’ll happen,” Kane said, turning around and studying him. “I liked you, Marshal Long. I thought you had some common sense.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that someone else was trying to kill you. It wasn’t us. And that being the case, you haven’t got a clue as to who is trying to put a hole in your hide.”
“At least I know who won’t be,” Longarm said, looking right at Hec Ward.
“There’s something else you should know,” Kane said. “When word gets out that we are disarmed and in this cell, we’re both dead men. They’ll shoot us in here like we were fish in a barrel.”
“They might try,” Longarm said, “but I’ll be close.”
“What about Miss Riley?”
“What about her?”
“You going to be close to her as well,” Kane asked, “just in case it wasn’t an accident that she got ambushed?”
Longarm frowned. “Why would anyone deliberately try to kill Megan?”
Kane shrugged. He seemed surprisingly calm, given the circumstances. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “But her father is a well-known lawman. A lot of people in this part of the country hate his guts and would like to do anything they could to bring him pain. Even shooting his daughter.”
“If they wanted to do that, they could have done it far easier in Reno,” Longarm countered. “That doesn’t make any sense at all to me.”
“Listen to me well,” Kane said. “You’re in way over your head. Hec and me were barely treading water, trying to figure out who is out to put us down under and is shaking down some of the merchants.”
Longarm laughed coldly. “I know who that is and it’s you,” he said.
When Kane looked away suddenly, Longarm turned his back on the pair and went to the front door. Before opening it, he said, “I’m taking the jail cell keys with me, and if you don’t make a big fuss, no one will find out what happened in here.”
“You can’t keep this a secret!” Ward swore. “Goddamn you, Long, the word will be out in ten minutes and we’ll be dead in fifteen.”