Fisher Lee said, “What are you looking so hot and bothered about?”
“Never mind. Come along, dammit.”
Fisher smiled. “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I, Longarm? My goodness, I’d hate to think I’d done that to such a good friend like you.”
Longarm said, with a vicious look on his face, “Go to hell, you sonofabitch. What prompted you to come over here?”
“Well, it occurred to me that we were going to take a trip and I didn’t know how long I was going to be gone, where we were going, and what I would need. So, damned fool that I was, I came over and knocked on your door. Now, wasn’t that dumb of me?”
Longarm laughed ruefully. “Well, I guess I can’t blame you, but my God, was your timing bad.”
“Was you about to have a little picnic, picking some flowers, was you?”
Longarm said sarcastically, “No, I didn’t get any flowers, damn you.”
“I just feel awful about that,” Fisher said.
They went through the big door of the hotel and stepped out onto the boardwalk. Longarm said, “You go on over to the general mercantile and get us some cheese and some saltines and canned peaches, apricots, and whatever else you can find. We’ll need provisions for about two meals, and you might get a couple blankets also.”
Fisher said, “Now, what in the hell is this? Last I heard we were going to Springer, and I know they have hotels there.”
“Yeah, I know, except we ain’t staying in Springer. We’ll be riding on.”
“Damnit, I might have known. You’re going to have me out on some dog-ass prairie for two or three days, sure as hell.”
“There ain’t no use complaining now. Wait until it gets real bad and then you can bitch.”
While Fisher headed for the mercantile, Longarm walked over to the mining office for one last visit. Simmons met him in the outer office and they stepped back through the door and out onto the sidewalk.
Simmons said, “I’ve wired on ahead, and I have a young foreman there who is going to meet you by the name of Eugene Wyman. He is a good man. I wrote the telegram so that he would understand this is a serious matter, but without revealing what your efforts were going to be directed toward. Marshal, I hope you understand about that nitroglycerin. I am sending you with eight one-ounce vials. I am having it packed in fifty pounds of ice on the train. It’s being done right now. I hope you understand that the responsibility is yours. I’ve also wired Eugene some instructions about that. Is it my understanding that you are going to be pushing on from Springer tonight by horseback?”
“That’s correct, although I don’t remember saying it.”
Simmons smiled. “Well, I have the feeling that you plan to be somewhere near the end of our tracks tomorrow morning, and if that’s the case, you’ll be doing some traveling tonight.”
Longarm said, “Very good, just don’t let it get around.”
“I understand. I want you to know that anyone who works for the mining company is at your disposal. Anything you need, anyone you need, ask Eugene and he’ll see that you have it. He is going to round up a crew for you. He will assure them there will be no danger, and I hope that’s true.”
Longarm said, “I’m going to make it as true as I can. I want to thank you, Mister Simmons, for your assistance.” He put out his hand. “I think it will turn out all right.”
Simmons said, “Sounds kind of risky to me, but then, risk is your game.”
Longarm smiled. “Aren’t you the one that plays around with nitro?”
Simmons laughed ruefully. “Yeah, I hope you understand I get paid damn well for it.”
“I intend to get paid for it also.”
After Longarm left Simmons, he walked over to the livery stables. He wasn’t quite to the door when the young man he’d hired to make the slingshot came rushing out, holding the very instrument that he had been assigned to create in his hand.
“Here you go, mister. Now, isn’t this a beauty? It’s got two two-foot-long India rubber bands on it, and look how soft this pouch is. It’ll hold a good-sized stone. Look here, I peeled the bark off of the Y branch. Ain’t that a beauty?”
Longarm took the slingshot by the handle, pulled the pouch back tentatively, stretching the thick rubber bands, and aimed between the Y of the two arms of the slingshot. He said, “Son, you did good. This is fine.” He reached into his pocket, took out the five-dollar gold piece, and flipped it in the air. The young man jumped two feet off the ground to catch it. Longarm laughed. “Good job, son. Now, you can fetch me my horse and saddle and I’ll be ready to go.”
The young man turned, saying, “Yes, sir!” and ran back into the barn.
While he and Fisher were waiting, Longarm speculated on why Simmons had decided to give him eight vials of the nitro instead of the six he had asked for. For a moment, the answer seemed simple: The extra two would be replacements in case he broke a couple. But then the thought occurred to him what would happen if he broke even one of them—he wouldn’t need the other six. He wouldn’t need anything. After he got through shuddering at the thought, it occurred to him that Simmons had a fair idea that he was going to use the nitro in some fashion against the Gallaghers, and had decided that if six ounces were good, eight were better. In some ways, Simmons was a very astute man.
They were sitting in a stock car with both of their horses loaded. Longarm had brought along a dun that was part quarter horse and part thoroughbred, a horse he had paid three hundred dollars for, which he thought was a considerable sum. The dun was a big, quick, barrel-chested horse that had good staying power. He had been one of the best horses Longarm had run across in the hundreds of horses, perhaps thousands, that he had gone through in his lifetime. Longarm had noted that Fisher had a sleek-looking black that appeared to have some good breeding in him, but then that was Fisher. Fisher liked the best. At that moment, he was sitting next to Longarm in a white silk shirt and the soft leather vest that he’d had on the night before.
Longarm said, “You’re going to wear those kind of clothes to sit in a stock car full of dust and straw?”
Fisher gave him a look. “They’re the only kind of clothes I got. Besides, what’s one silk shirt more or less?”
The car seemed uncomfortably small, although there was plenty of room for the horses and the two men. The narrow-gauge railway was simply that; the rails were placed ten inches closer together than normal rail tracks, and the cars were sized accordingly. The mining company used the stock car because they used donkeys, burros, and mules in their mines and they were constantly shipping them around. The train looked smaller only in comparison to the other trains sitting in the depot. The engine, looked, to Longarm, like what the railroad called a switching engine, one that was used around the freight yards to switch cars from one siding to another.
Not long after they had arrived at the train and gotten their horses loaded, a man in working clothes had pulled Longarm aside and inquired if he was the marshal. Longarm hadn’t been wearing his badge, and he had pinned it on for answer. The man had said, “I’ve got your goods in a car up the train. Got them well iced down in a swing cradle. They ought to be all right.”
Longarm had said, “Just out of curiosity, what if they aren’t all right? You said they ought to be all right, but you didn’t say for sure.”
The man had spat tobacco juice reflectively to one side. “Well, that’s the one good thing about nitro. If you make a mistake with it, you’ll never find out.”
Longarm had said, “I can’t tell you how much that comforts me, mister.”
Now the train began a series of slow jolts as the engine moved off and the slack was taken up in the coupling. Longarm said, “Looks like we’re moving.” He took out his watch. It was six o’clock on the button. “It seems the mining company runs their trains on a tighter schedule than the regular lines.”