Longarm jumped up and raced across the street. The gunfire had roused the town and people were poking their heads out of hotel windows. A pair of drunks reeled out of an all-night saloon, and then reversed direction and almost tore the batwing doors off scrambling to get back inside. Where had their ambusher gone? That was the question that filled Longarm's mind as he shot into a narrow corridor between two buildings and then pounded into an alley. He heard the sound of receding hoofbeats, and swore in helpless silence because there wasn't a horse on the street that he could use to chase after the ambusher.
"Damn!" Longarm swore. Who in the hell had tried to kill him? Had it just been someone out of his past, or had someone actually followed them all the way from Prescott?
Longarm had no idea. All he knew for certain was that the sonofabitch had missed and hit Maria, and now she would be so scared that she might even refuse to testify.
Longarm holstered his six-gun and hurried back to the main street. Maria was just starting to rouse.
"We need to find a doctor," Lucy told him, her voice strained and anxious. "The bullet might have broken her rib."
Longarm stood up and yelled, "Someone call a doctor! We got a woman that's been shot!"
Longarm crouched down beside Maria, who was beginning to twitch a little and come around. "Easy now," he said in his quietest voice.
"She's not a horse," Lucy said. "Just... just let me attend to her."
"Fine," Longarm said, "but we simply can't afford to miss that stagecoach to Yuma. We've got enemies here and that's why we have to get out of this town."
"But Maria has been shot."
"She's been nicked," Longarm corrected. "And if we stick around here another day for tomorrow's stage, whoever did this might decide to take another shot at me and maybe wound you or Maria."
"What makes you think that the man who fired was aiming for you?" Lucy asked.
The question brought Longarm up short. "You're right," he conceded. "It could have been any of your late husband's relatives or even Miguel Rivera, the man she says fired the fatal shot."
"Yes," Lucy said, "they'd want to kill Maria if they realized why we were taking her to Yuma."
"That's right," Longarm said, "but the shot might even have been meant for you."
"That thought has already occurred to me," Lucy said, her eyes tight with worry.
"And that," Longarm said, emphasizing his words, "is why we have to get on that stage. Once Maria has given her sworn statement before a judge that you are innocent and Miguel Rivera is your husband's real murderer, then we can afford to relax a little."
Lucy nodded with understanding. "I just wish the doctor would hurry up and get here."
"Here he comes now," Longarm said, stepping aside as a middle-aged man wearing pajamas and a robe but carrying his medical kit hurried up the street.
"How bad has she been hurt?"
"Not bad," Longarm said. "But you're the doctor. You tell us."
"I'm a dentist just filling in while the doctor is out of town." He leaned forward, peered myopically at the wound, and said, "Hell, you had me worried. This is just a scratch!"
"Well, for crying out loud!" Lucy exploded. "We're sorry to disappoint you."
The man scowled and opened his bag, which Longarm now saw contained mostly tooth-pulling instruments. There were, however, a few bandages in the kit. "We'll just wrap this up tight and stop the bleeding," the dentist said. "And I'll give her a little medicine for the pain. She'll be fine until Doc Hostettler returns."
"We're going to take the stagecoach to Yuma this morning," Longarm told the man as he began to bandage the wound."
"Well you can't do that, Marshal. This woman could even go into shock!"
"She'll recover just as well on a stagecoach as she would in a bed and she'll be in less danger."
The dentist wasn't pleased. "Hostettler won't be happy about this. But then again, he's in Yuma and you might want to look him up. He goes over there to do medical checks on the prisoners once a month."
Lucy paled a little but said nothing, and Longarm thought it wise to do the same. He leaned over to LUCY and said, "I need to get over to the stage office and purchase our tickets before they leave without us. I'll be right back."
"All right," Lucy said, "we're not going anywhere."
Longarm hurried down the street. He hated like hell to leave Lucy and Maria unprotected, but he really didn't expect that the man who had ambushed them would come back. By now, he was probably halfway back to Prescott.
Fifteen minutes later, Longarm had three tickets to Yuma in his pocket and he'd tipped the driver of the stage an extra dollar to pick up Lucy and Maria.
Maria was crying when they arrived and the stagecoach driver shouted down, "What in the devil is the matter with her, fer crissakes!"
"She's been shot, you idiot!" Lucy yelled. "So shut up and tend to your own business."
The driver shut up. Longarm grabbed Maria under the arms, and had considerable trouble getting her into the coach.
"It's real pitiful," the dentist said. "The poor woman ought to be resting in bed."
"If she stays here, she might be resting in a grave, Longarm retorted in anger.
"You forgot to pay me."
Longarm pitched the man two dollars. He grabbed their bedrolls and his Winchester and shoved them into the coach with Maria, Lucy, and a heavyset middle-aged man with mutton-chop whiskers and a stern bearing. Maria was still crying.
"I'm not pleased riding with a shot Mexican!" the man thundered as they collapsed on their seats inside the coach.
"Well that's too damn bad!" Lucy said, eyes blazing.
The heavyset man's mouth twisted into a sneer. "Can't you at least make her stop that infernal racket? She'll drive us all crazy."
"I tell you what," Longarm said through clenched teeth. "I have a suggestion."
"And that is?"
Longarm grabbed the man by his shirtfront, flung open the door, and threw the miserable fellow out. He landed heavily and yelped, "You broke my shoulder!"
"Good!" Longarm said, "because now maybe you'll begin to understand the meaning of sympathy. And besides, the doc is right here and waiting."
"He ain't no damn doctor, he's a dentist!"
Longarm slammed the door shut and dropped the curtain. The coach lurched forward.
"It's going to be all right," Longarm assured the women under his protection. "They'll be no more trouble."
They didn't believe him. Longarm could see that they did not by the expression on their pretty but frightened faces.
CHAPTER 12
Their stagecoach ride to Yuma was blessedly uneventful. Longarm had managed to calm Maria down, and although the poor girl was in considerable pain, he doubted if her ribs had been cracked or broken. True to Lucy's prediction, the Colorado River had dwindled in late fall to a mere stream and their driver had no trouble crossing the vast, sandy riverbed lined by willows and cottonwood trees.
"There's Yuma," Longarm said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
"And there's the prison," Lucy said in a grim voice. "I hope to God that I never have to enter its gates."
The prison was imposing, to say the least. it stood poised on a high cliff overlooking the river, and Longarm knew that its eighteen-foot-high adobe walls were eight feet thick at the base, tapering to five feet thick at the top. Walkways had been made on top of the walls so that prison guards could patrol around the perimeter twenty-four hours a day.
Standing defiantly overlooking the entire prison compound was the main guard tower, which bristled with a Lowell Battery Gun, which was an improvement over the old Gatling Gun. On a previous visit, Longarm had been told that the Lowell Gun was capable of firing more than a hundred rounds a minute into any section of the prison yard. In addition, at each of the towers there were armed guards with.44-40 Winchester rifles. To get in and out of the prison, you had to pass through massive, strap-iron grilled gates that swung beneath a thick archway that was heavily guarded.