Longarm went back outside and watched the Mexicans putting the new team in place. They harnessed up the mules a span at a time, and they did it with a sureness and quickness he had to admire. Really, he thought, it took a good Mexican to work with Spanish mules. They seemed to have an understanding of the brutes that nobody else did. Finally the team was in the traces and ready to go. The mules that had just finished their run were in the corral, lathered up and still mixing around nervously, unable to settle down.
Finally it was time to go. Longarm hugged Mrs. Higgins and thanked her for all her help. He shook Higgins’s hand and promised the old man he’d be hearing from him. He gave him a wink that no one else could see and said, “I’ll see that you get all the news.”
They climbed aboard. Rita Ann went in first, and she went all the way to the front and sat on the left-hand bench. The doctor went in and sat midway down on the right-hand side. Longarm sat at the tail end on the left, over his Winchester carbine.
Before he climbed up to his seat, Ben, the driver, stuck his head in the coach to tell them he’d be taking it kind of slow at first. “That is,” he said, “if I can hold these damn mules. They is a pretty good grade starts about ten miles this side of the next station, an’ if I let these mules run right off they won’t have a blame thing left to pull that grade. They is mules in this string that have made that very same mistake, but you can’t learn a derned mule nothin’. So don’t get fretty if it seems like we are pokin’ along. We’ll get there.”
They pulled out at three-thirty under a hot afternoon sun. The stage jerked as the mules were let go by the Mexicans holding their heads. Longarm could feel the run in them, almost see the driver straining against the reins to hold them back. And at first, it didn’t seem like he would be able. As Longarm leaned out and waved to Mr. and Mrs. Higgins the landscape was passing at an alarming rate. But gradually, the driver got control and brought the mules down to a slow trot. Longarm could hear him swearing over the crunch and swish of the iron-rimmed tires.
Longarm looked around. The doctor had his head on his chest, swaying with the motion of the coach, seeming to be catching a quick nap. Longarm looked down the bench at Rita Ann. She was half facing forward, looking out the side of the coach. She had had very little to say to him after the episode of the night before. Some moments after he’d said good night and closed his eyes, she had slipped away back to her bed on the divan. In the morning she had been as pleasant as she was supposed to be in front of the Higginses. There had been no opportunity for him to get her alone to talk and see how she liked having someone else call the tune. The doctor had come in a little before noon and had been given some lunch with them, and then there had been the business of packing and getting ready. Higgins had called him aside and held an earnest and long conversation about what help he could be if anything unlawful came up. So between one thing and another, Longarm and Rita Ann had not really spoken. He thought she was acting cool toward him, but then she always had been cool. Perhaps she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of acting like something unusual had happened. Well, he thought, she could just sit up in front of the stage and keep to herself. It made no difference to him. He was only grateful to finally be moving and somewhat on the trail of Carl Lowe. And then there was the matter of the three riders from the day before. He couldn’t shake it out of his mind that they were somewhere up ahead, waiting. It didn’t make any sense that three gunmen would be riding across the Arizona badlands with no purpose in mind, and he figured he was riding in a coach that contained a few hundred thousand purposes. He looked out the back of the coach and saw that the relay station had dropped below the horizon. In spite of the driver’s best efforts, they were moving right along. But it was still going to be a long ride to Buckeye and the railroad and a serious effort to track Carl Lowe. He settled back, wishing he had a cigar. He had a bottle of whiskey, but that was in his saddlebags and his saddlebags were on top of the coach in the luggage rack.
They rode on, the heat really making itself felt now. The mules had been slowed down to a walk in anticipation of the pull up the grade that lay ahead. Longarm yawned and looked out his side. When he brought his eyes back into the coach the doctor was apparently awake. He smiled at Longarm. “Nice day, wouldn’t you say, sir?”
Longarm yawned again. “Yeah, if we were under a shade tree. Could do with a little rain.”
The doctor had his little black bag at his feet. He said, “I believe it is time for a light libation.”
Longarm said, “That stuff will kill you in this heat.”
The doctor said, “Not as fast as this.” When he brought his hand out of the bag he was holding a large-caliber revolver. He said, “Wouldn’t you agree that a bullet is faster than whiskey, Marshal Long? Or should I say, Longarm?”
Longarm stiffened. He had his arms stretched out on either side along the tops of the seat-back. His legs were crossed at the ankles and out in front of him. He was in no position to make any moves, sudden or otherwise. He said slowly, “Doc, I reckon you know that guns are dangerous. When you been drinkin’ you sure don’t want to be fooling around with one.”
The doctor smiled. Longarm noticed that he had repaired the bent frames of his glasses. Then the doctor said, “Marshal, that is excellent advice. I want you to reach to your side and grasp the butt of your revolver with two fingers. Just two. I want you to very carefully pull it out of your holster and throw it out of the coach. You are closest to the back, so I suggest you just pitch it out there.”
Longarm did not move his hands or his arms. He said, “That would leave you with a gun and I wouldn’t have one.”
The doctor smiled again and cocked the hammer back on the revolver. “Don’t make me get careless, Marshal. This gun doesn’t have a particularly fine-tuned hair trigger on it, but this coach is jolting about. A wrong bump and this pistol could go off. I don’t think I could miss at this range. Do you? You don’t want to bet your life on the nerves of an old drunk. That wouldn’t be wise.”
Then Longarm saw what had bothered him about the doctor’s eyes. “Hell, you ain’t no old drunk! Dammit, I should have seen before.”
“Whatever are you talking about, sir?”
“Your eyes, dammit, your eyes! The whites of your damn eyes.”
“And what is wrong with the whites of my ‘damn’ eyes, as you choose to call them?”
Longarm was furious with himself. “They are white, that’s what the hell is wrong with them. Dammit! If you were an old drunk they’d be bloodshot! I saw it and it bothered me, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Hell, you’ve been acting. Your eyes are whiter than mine.”
The doctor smiled genially. “Well, all that aside, Marshal, this coach continues to jolt its way along and the business end of this revolver is still pointed at your chest. I want you to throw your side arm out of the coach.”
Longarm looked down the bench at Rita Ann. She was sitting quietly, serenely, her hands holding her cloth purse in her lap. She seemed detached from what was happening. Longarm figured she was scared. Well, for that matter, so was he. He never had cared to have men he didn’t know or understand point loaded pistols at him.
He said, “You’re not going to shoot me, Doc. The driver will hear the noise and he’ll pull up his team and come to have a look.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s probably quite true, Marshal. And then you would have a dead driver and a dead guard. Something I am not anxious to have happen. But if I have to shoot you I will have to shoot them also.”
“You couldn’t drive this team.”