Longarm and the Silver Mine Marauders by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans [Evans, Tabor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Westerns, Fiction
ISBN: 9780515116120
Google: 3a1qAAAACAAJ
Publisher: Jove Books
Published: 1995-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Longarm picked up another stone and fired it high into the night sky, admiring the arc it made. He said, “Oh, I reckon to kill me a giant.”

“Hell, who do you think you are? David? Ain’t nobody around here named Goliath.”

Longarm said, “This, my friend, might be the most deadly weapon you’ve ever seen.”

Fisher shook his head slowly. “I’m sitting on top of a rock with a crazy man wearing a badge who’s got a kid’s slingshot, and we might have two dozen armed bandits coming this way at first light. Can you beat that? You know, for years, I have told people that my mamma didn’t raise no fool. I was wrong, because here I am.”

Longarm said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re still alive. I, don’t know how, but you are.”

“And another thing, when in the hell are you going to tell me what that ice is for? You plan on dumping it down this butte and freezing those folks to death?”

Longarm said, “I’m keeping something cold.” He had about decided that it was time that Fisher knew what his plan was. He had gotten this far, and Longarm was pretty certain that Fisher would stay. Fisher asked, “Exactly what do you need to keep cold?”

Longarm said, “Do you promise not to get nervous if I tell you?”

“Well, I don’t know what you could have sitting on ice that would make me nervous, unless it was that woman that you had in Taos. She sounds like she could use some cooling down. Yeah, I promise I won’t get nervous.”

“No matter what it is?”

“No matter what it is. I don’t think there is anything more that you could do or say to me in the history of our acquaintance that would make me nervous. I’ve been through the wars with you, Longarm, and I’ve been in some places that I swore that I’d never get into, and I got into them because of you, and I’m still here. What do you have in the ice?”

Longarm looked around at Fish so he could see his face fairly distinctly in the moonlight. He said, “Nitro.”

Fish blinked. “What?”

“Nitroglycerin.”

Fish made a sighing sound. “Are you telling me that you packed some nitroglycerin on the back of that burro all the way from Springer with me riding right next to him? Are you going to tell me that, huh?”

“Not if it’s going to make you nervous.”

Fisher swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing prominantly. He said, “You mean, on that banging, swaying, jerking, bucking train there was some nitroglycerin? That stuff that goes off if you even breathe on it wrong?”

“That very stuff. Nitroglycerin. Highly unstable. The secret is keeping it cold, Fish. Even then, there ain’t no guarantee.”

“Am I to understand then that sitting over there behind that boulder in those canvas sacks full of ice there is some nitroglycerin in there, not ten yards from where I am sitting?”

Longarm nodded. “Yes.”

Almost imperceptibly, Fisher began to back away. “You got just a little bit, right?”

“Not very much.

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