But it was no good. Thinking of her made him angry, and he didn’t have any extra energy to waste on anything other than keeping his legs moving. His shirt was too tight across the chest. It felt as if it was constricting him, closing off his lungs. With the hand holding the revolver he made several attempts to rip open the buttons. He finally succeeded on the third try, but the effort was such that it made him stumble and almost fall. That scared him. If he ever fell he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up.
He tried to think about how he would organize matters once he got to the station, what he’d have Higgins looking for to make him some sort of conveyance that could be pulled behind two or four or more mules. Then how to repair the wires. But again, he couldn’t concentrate.
And where were the three gunmen? The three he’d sent packing. They had to be part of the plan, but they had not met the stage. Maybe they had gone ahead and taken control of the station the stage was bound for.
It was all too much. He finally quit trying to think at all. He ran. He ran with his head down, looking ahead no more than three or four yards. He ran, staring at the brown, ugly, sandy dirt. He ran with the sound of his own gasping sounding like the roaring surf he’d once heard out in California. He could feel his pulse beating in his temple. It was going like a trip-hammer. The only time it ever did that, as best he could remember, was in the heat of passion. Well, this sure as hell wasn’t the heat of passion. There was heat, heat enough to bake bread and fry steaks, but no passion.
Ripping open his shirt hadn’t helped. What was constricting him, he discovered, was not his shirt but the skin of his own chest. And underneath that his ribs were choking him. For the first time he began to think about failure. His body was telling him that it couldn’t go on, not for any reason.
Finally he got to the point where he said to himself that he would take just ten more strides and then he would stop. He counted them off in his head, his puffing and gasping coming faster than the count. When he reached ten, he told himself he would just go ten more and then definitely stop. But when that ten was up he made a deal with himself that he would run ten more strides and then he would look up. If he could not see some little part of the relay station he would stop. Maybe he would keep on walking, but he would stop running. He counted off the ten strides and then very slowly raised his eyes. Nothing but desolate badlands met his eyes. There was nothing in sight that looked like the hand of man had ever touched it with the exception of the coach tracks. He could stop now, he thought, with honor. He should stop. He was going to die if he didn’t stop. He wanted, he needed, it was necessary to stop.
He kept running. Now, burning his mind like an image that would never fade was every laugh that damn woman had had on him. Well, he would have the last laugh or he would die in worn-out socks.
He raised his eyes. There, directly ahead, he could see the buildings of the relay station. Not just the tops of the buildings, but all of them. All of them and the front yard. Somehow he had struggled up some sort of rise in the prairie and topped it and then there, right in front of him, was the relay station. It was downhill all the way to the front door.
But he was starting to stagger. His legs felt like they were made of lead and not really connected to him. Of their own choice they seemed to want to go wandering off in different and odd directions that had nothing to do with his intentions for them. He didn’t know how far away the buildings were. Between the film of exhaustion over his eyes and the shimmering heat waves, he couldn’t tell if they were a half mile away or a week. All he could do was keep on the way he’d come, putting one foot in front of the other.
He put his head down and went back to staring at the ground, guiding his steps by the tracks of the stage. His legs were getting limp and his shoulders were aching so bad from carrying the guns that he didn’t think he could stand it much longer. For some reason he had started breathing easier. It was as if something had finally burst under the pressure and he had a greater capacity to suck in the dry, hot air.
He raised his eyes, concentrating on the main building of the station. It seemed he could see someone standing under the porch, very near the front door. He looked down at the sand again and did not raise his eyes again until he’d counted off thirty strides. Yes, there was definitely someone there. If his vision had been normal he felt almost certain he would have been able to see the figure clearly. Then a distant noise seemed to come to his ears, like someone shouting. Through his squinted eyes he saw the figure come out of the shade of the porch and start toward him. It was Higgins. He was waving his arms and yelling, but Longarm couldn’t make out the words for the roaring in his ears and the sound of his gasping breaths. Then he saw that Higgins had broken into a kind of trot, running to meet him. He wanted to make some sort of signal, but he couldn’t raise either hand, not and hold on to his weapons.
Now he could see clearly that he was not that far from the station. Desert air was known for playing tricks on your vision, but he could tell it was no more than two hundred yards away. And Higgins was coming on, the distance between them narrowing. Then he finally heard Higgins’s voice. He was yelling as he bounced up and down in his peculiar run, “Marshal Long! Longarm! Mister Long! Marshal! What’s wrong? What happened?”
Longarm slogged along grimly, thinking that Higgins must have never been out of breath if he thought you could run and yell at the same time. At least after you’d run better than two miles under the desert sun. He was dying to know what time it was, but he couldn’t look at his watch. He’d had one look at it just before the doctor had pulled out his pistol. It was about a mile after they’d left the station. His watch had said forty minutes after three. But then he didn’t know how much time had elapsed before he’d finally gotten out of the coach. It couldn’t have been much, not a great deal more than five minutes. Perhaps ten at the most. He had to remember to look at the time when he got to the station. It was very important that he know what kind of a lead the stage had.
Then Higgins reached him. For a moment the old man danced around in front of Longarm like the runner was going to stop. Finally, when Longarm had to go to the trouble to circle him, he fell in stride to Longarm’s left asking what had happened, what was going on, what and where was the trouble, and why was Longarm running.
Longarm knew he didn’t have much breath to spare, but he thought if he could get the old man to run ahead and have something prepared for him, it would save trouble. He got the words out one at a time, between gasping breaths, each one coming out as slowly and painfully from his parched throat as if they were being pulled from him with red-hot tongs. He said, “Hurry … to … station … fix … me … big … glass … water. Put … some … whiskey … in … it. Hurry.”
But Higgins didn’t go. He said, “But what’s it all about, Marshal? What’s happened?”
The world was starting to turn dim, even in the blinding sunlight. “Can’t … talk. No … breath. Hurry … dying … of … thirst.”
Finally the old man seemed to get the message. He said, “You want me to run on ahead and get you a big glass of water and put a little whiskey in it?”
All Longarm could do was nod mutely. But he did hold out his rifle to the old man. Higgins stared at it for a second and then took it. He said, “Yessir, I’m going to run fast as I can an’ fix yore water. Longarm, it ain’t healthy running in this sun.”