"Take off your coat and your shirt, please," Ida requested with a smile of encouragement.
"I'll freeze to death!"
Luke moved over to the small stove and addressed the frightened mail clerk. "Do you suppose we can stoke up the fire and get some warmth in here?"
The clerk, a thin, ascetic-looking fellow, bobbed his pointed chin like a bird. His voice was high-pitched and carping when he complained, "They don't give me enough coal to burn. Not near enough! I really freeze in this weather, and I'm trying to ration it out to last until this train makes Rock Springs."
Longarm went over to the coal bin and, sure enough, there was not more than a few shovelfuls. It might get the car warm enough so that you could not see your own breath, but not much warmer. "This is all the coal you have?"
"That's right!" the clerk complained wearily. "It's awful, isn't it?"
"I'll get you more coal at the next stop," Longarm promised as he took the shovel and emptied the bin into the stove. "But right now, we've got to have some heat. I'm about to freeze to death myself."
They waited a few minutes for the stove to warm up the mail car, and then Fergus gritted his teeth and worked himself out of his coat and shirt.
"Please sit down," Ida requested. "I'm a head shorter than you, young man. I can't begin to examine your wound standing on my tiptoes."
Fergus took a seat. He was shivering violently despite the new-found warmth of the crackling stove. His shoulder wound was a mess. There was just no other way for Longarm to describe the damage caused by his bullet.
"What do you think?" Fergus asked nervously. "It's pretty bad, huh?"
"It looks worse than it is," Ida said, shifting around the chair to probe around the area of Fergus's shoulder blade. "I think the bullet is very near the blade bone. I believe that it can easily be removed."
"Are you sure?" Fergus asked, looking very nervous.
"No one can be exactly sure," Ida said. "But that's my opinion." She motioned to Luke. The man nodded his head and hurriedly left the mail car.
"Where's he going?" Fergus asked in a thin, reedy voice.
"To get my father's medical bags. We have a bottle of chloroform."
Fergus gulped several times. He even looked to Longarm with a plea in his eyes and said, "You think that I ought to let her do this, Deputy?"
"It's a long way to Reno, the first place where we're likely to find a real surgeon. If it was me, I'd give Mrs. Friedlander the benefit of the doubt."
"I don't know about that there chloryform stuff she's talking about. I'd rather have some whiskey."
"Too bad," Longarm said. "That's not possible."
"The chloroform is better," Ida said. "You won't feel as bad afterward. It's a little more difficult to administer the precise dosage necessary, but I've done it many times before and I'm absolutely convinced that I will not put you to sleep permanently."
"Well, good!"
Ida smiled. "I should tell you that there is already suppuration leaking from the wound. It doesn't smell good, but I've some medicines that will fight the gangrene. I would not do this operation if I did not feel confident that your life can yet be saved."
Fergus wrapped his arms around his bony torso and hugged himself to keep from shaking. He looked as white as snow, very thin and very worried. "I just don't know what to do!" he whined.
"Do what the lady says," Longarm advised, sure that he could also smell the gangrenous rot.
Maybe Fergus could smell it too, because he chewed his lower lip for a few seconds and then finally nodded his head. "All right, let's get this over with. But I want whiskey, not that chloryform stuff!"
Longarm was about to tell Fergus that it didn't matter what he wanted, that whiskey was out of the question unless perhaps as a farewell drink.
But Ida said, "I have some whiskey in the medical bag. It's a good painkiller as well as disinfectant. You can have the whole bottle."
Fergus brightened considerably at this news. "Now you're talking!"
A few minutes later, Fergus was guzzling whiskey and Ida was spreading out her father's medical kit. She neatly arranged the shiny surgical instruments on the mail car worktable. When everything was in readiness, she said, "I think we had better get started, Mr. Fergus."
The outlaw showed no interest in relinquishing the bottle of whiskey, which he had already half emptied. He eased back on the table, and his eyes burned with hatred when he stared at Longarm. Then, turning back to Ida Friedlander, he said, "All right, let's get the damn bullet out."
"Roll over on your stomach."
Fergus rolled over and pushed himself up on his elbows so that he could pour whiskey down his gullet. When he finished the bottle, he dropped it on the floor. It rolled up against the wall and Fergus hissed, "Let's go!"
Longarm watched closely as Ida took a scalpel from her husband. She made a quick, deep incision that lifted Fergus howling off the table. Then he gripped the edge of the table and ground his teeth.
Ida Friedlander proved herself to be a skilled surgeon. She was into the wound in seconds, and her husband kept feeding her forceps to clamp off the worst bleeding. She quickly dug Longarm's misshapen bullet out, and packed the wound with disinfectant powder before suturing the incision.
The entire operation took less than twenty minutes. When it was over, Ida heaved an obvious sigh of relief and said, "Mr. Fergus, how are you?"
"I've been better," he whispered. "Help me sit up."
"It would be good for you to keep lying down."
"I want to sit up, damn you!"
Longarm stepped forward. He grabbed Fergus by the hair and yanked his head off the table. "Don't you dare talk like that to a woman who probably saved your life!"
"It's all right," Ida said. "Please let him go."
Longarm released the man's hair. Fergus's jaw bounced on the table, and then the man pushed himself into a sitting position.
For a moment, all eyes were on Longarm, who was clearly struggling with his anger. And in that moment, Fergus happened to glance down and see the bloody surgical instruments. Without warning, his right hand grabbed the scalpel and his left hand fisted Ida's hair.
Before Longarm could move, the scalpel was pressed to Ida's throat. Luke made a tortured sound in his throat. He took a step forward and cried, "Please don't kill her!"
Fergus was woozy from blood loss and whiskey. He licked his lips and his eyes radiated hatred as he stared at Longarm. "You pull that big gun of yours and try to shoot me again," he choked, "and this lady is a dead Samaritan! You understand me?"
"I understand you perfectly."
Fergus giggled. "No surgeon in the world is fast enough to keep this woman from bleeding to death once I cut her throat from ear to ear."
"You'd do that after what Mrs. Friedlander did to save your worthless life?"
"Deputy, I'll kill her in a heartbeat if that's what it takes! Now, with your left hand, ease that gun out of your holster."
Longarm was still shaking; only it was no longer from the cold--it was with fury. He knew without a doubt that once Fergus had his gun, the man would shoot him and the rest of them to death. Handing Fergus a loaded six-gun was not even a remote consideration.
"You should think this out again," Longarm warned. "It's the whiskey that's made you crazy."
"Oh, no!" Fergus cried. "It's the fact that I was at Laramie Summit and so was Ned Rowe. You'd have gotten someone to squeal and say that sooner or later, and I'd have been sentenced to hang. That's why I'm getting out of here now!"
Fergus motioned to the large sliding door. "Tell the clerk to open it wide."
"Open it," Longarm said, not daring to move.
The clerk rushed over to the door, threw the latch, and pushed the door open. All the heat that had been generated by the fire was lost as cold air blasted into the mail car. Mail still unsorted and resting in trays took flight in a blizzard of paper that swirled in the air. Outside, the rain was still falling and the higher sage-covered hills were dusted with a blanket of glistening snow.