“What are you taking it for this time?”
Longarm pointed toward his mouth. “Toothache.”
“Why don’t you go to a dentist? We got some good ones in town. A few even speak English.”
“Right now I ain’t got the time.”
“Well,” the clerk said, “I don’t reckon I need to warn you about the laudanum. Don’t take any whiskey with it. It’s powerful stuff—and it might make you a little groggy if you take too much.”
“How much is too much?”
“Don’t take over half a teaspoonful. Teaspoonful at the most. Was I you, I’d try and work it up around the gums where the tooth is hurting. I wouldn’t swallow any more than I had to.” Just as Longarm was leaving, the clerk called after him, “And don’t do no dangerous work while you’re taking it. It kind of slows you down.”
Longarm stopped and looked back, his mind suddenly on Raoul San Diego. “What do you mean by dangerous work?”
“Oh, anything. I wouldn’t work wild cattle or ride a bucking horse.”
Longarm started to say, What about a gunfight? but he kept the words to himself and just nodded and went on out the door and then next door to the bank. He put the little bottle in his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. He’d been planning on taking a quick dose, but as careful as the apothecary had said he ought to be, he figured he’d wait until he was back in his room at the hotel.
The matter at the bank did not take long. It was a routine transaction for a bank in cattle country. There was nothing unusual about it except for the fact that he was using only his initial, and the bank, to Longarm’s surprise, charged him a fifty-dollar fee. Longarm was a little irritated by the transaction fee, and told the bank manager as much. But the manager, a sleek-looking portly man, assured him it was the custom and had been for some time. That had shut him up, since transferring cattle money was not in his normal line of business. Privately, Longarm thought, it was the custom, all right, but only in Laredo, since it was in line with the border practice of helping themselves to your socks once they’d stolen your boots. He’d very nearly come to grief when the manager had asked what bank would be wiring the money. For a moment he’d fumbled and hemmed and hawed before saying, “Well, it’s my new partner. I reckon he’ll be using his bank. Thing is I don’t know which bank that might be. He does business with several. But I’d reckon it will be one in Colorado.”
He’d ducked the business about not using a first name by simply declaring, “Never cared for it, so I don’t use it much. ‘Long’ suits most folks well enough. Does me.”
Then he’d paid the manager fifty dollars out of his own pocket and gone back to the hotel. The toothache had come back full force and he was hurrying to get to his room so he could use some of the laudanum. It seemed as if there hadn’t been a moment in the last month that he hadn’t been hurting.
But as Longarm hurried through the hotel lobby, it seemed to him that a lot of eyes were following him and that more than one man lowered his newspaper to cast a look his way. He could almost hear them whispering to each other. “That there is the feller was talking to Dulcima yesterday. Yessir, right out there on the plaza. Big as life. Damn near had his head down in her tits. Seen it myself. Wonder when San Diego is coming to settle his hash? Wouldn’t care to be in his boots. But anybody foolish enough to carry on like that, and I mean right there in front of the preacher and ever’body, near about deserves what he gets.”
He let himself into his room and sat down on the side of the bed, took his hat off and then unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out the little bottle filled with the milky liquid. He removed the glass stopper and smelled it. It didn’t smell like much of anything. He held the bottle out at arm’s length. It looked harmless enough, but the apothecary had cautioned him as if he were dealing with nitroglycerine. And maybe he was. If San Diego came around, all he’d have to be was about a heartbeat too slow and there wouldn’t be any more heartbeats.
But the toothache was pounding by now, and he decided, the hell with it. What were the chances of San Diego coming around in the next few hours? Damned slim, he thought. And if he didn’t get some relief from the pain, he was liable to get to yelling. Not having a teaspoon to measure it out with, he tried to imagine how much half a teaspoonful might be. Maybe just as much as would go on the tip of his tongue. Not much more than that.
He drew the bottle from his lips and put it down, resting his arm on his knee. Hell, he was scared to take the damn stuff. Sure as shooting, the minute he took a swig, there’d come a knock on his door and it would be Raoul San Diego wanting to know what the hell was going on with Dulcima. And when that moment came, he had to be at his best. It was a hell of a quandary. He reached over and set the still-open bottle on the bedside table, laying the stopper beside it. Maybe, he thought, he ought to just pour it out and put temptation out of his way, especially with his toothache screaming down the clouds. For a good few minutes he sat there staring at the little bottle, letting the ache in his tooth wash over him like a wave. The apothecary had said something about rubbing some on the gum around the tooth. Hell, that couldn’t do much harm. He reached over, got the bottle, and held it for a moment in his left hand. Finally he put his index finger over the mouth of the bottle and tipped it over. There was a little of the white liquid on the ball of his finger. As quickly as he could, he reached up into his mouth, trying to find the exact place where the pain was coming from.
It wasn’t as easy as he’d thought. He scraped a little of the laudanum off on his lip trying to maneuver his finger into his mouth. Then he had to feel for the right spot, and that used up quite a bit more of the laudanum. By the time he’d located the bad tooth, there seemed to be nothing left on his finger.
He took his finger out of his mouth and waited. After a moment or two he felt his lip going a little numb. Then part of his mouth seemed to be numbing up also, but not the right part. Damn, he thought, the stuff was strong as hell. He didn’t remember it having such an effect. But then he’d been hurting so bad the last time he used it he hadn’t noticed much of anything. Now he not only had his toothache to worry about, there was this new element that he didn’t know what to make of. He set the bottle back on the night stand and sat still for a moment, wondering if he’d done any harm to himself. Suddenly, like he hadn’t planned it, he made a quick move with his right hand toward the butt of his revolver. He sat, and was very still for a second. Then he did it again, and then again a few seconds later. “Damn!” he said aloud. He couldn’t tell if he was slower or not. He made an abrupt turn toward the door, leading with his left eye, seeing how fast the door came into view. ” Damnit!” he said, “damnit damnit!”
And damn that sonofabitch Austin Davis. If the man was back, he could take care of Longarm, like a partner ought to, and Longarm could drink some of that painkiller and get a little relief. As it was, he was scared to take it and scared he wouldn’t be able to keep from taking it. What he ought to do, he thought, was get himself lodged in the jail by punching a deputy sheriff. That way at least he could down a good dose of the stuff and get some rest from the pain. But, Laredo being what it was, they’d probably just fine him the money in his pocket and put him back out on the street. He sat there thinking and hurting and getting angrier by the moment. It was one hell of a mess, to find himself practically hiding out in his hotel room, avoiding some cheap nickel-plated gunslinger and having to live with a toothache because he couldn’t afford to mess up an arrest of corrupt officials that some damn junior marshal he didn’t even like was hoping to bring off to make himself look good. And that same damn junior marshal didn’t even have the decency to show up when he was needed. Longarm was thoroughly disgusted. He wasn’t worried about being able to handle San Diego, laudanum or not. The problem was he couldn’t risk any trouble with the man until the trap was sprung. He couldn’t think of a time he’d ever got himself into a more ridiculous situation and, damnit, it was all Austin Davis’s fault. He hadn’t as yet figured out how, or why, but the sonofabitch ought to be around when he was needed. Davis could take on San Diego and it wouldn’t cause an upset in the plans. Davis was supposedly the stock contractor Longarm had hired to bring up cattle to the border, and what he did once he’d delivered the cattle had nothing to do with Longarm. Hell, Davis could pick a fight with Raoul San Diego and kill him and it wouldn’t make no difference to the plan Longarm had set up. He could say, and act quite righteous about it, that he couldn’t be held responsible for what some tequila-crazy border stomper got up to. He’d hired the man to deliver cattle and he was quits with him after that. He was damn sorry about Mister Caster’s number one man, but that kind of thing could happen any time to anybody.