Longarm and the Railroad Murders by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Chapter 10

Longarm felt as if he were swimming up from the bottom of a lake toward the sun. Swimming harder than he’d ever swam in his life, but he was running out of oxygen and life.

Faster, harder, he thought with his mind turning to fire in his skull. Don’t breathe, don’t breathe!

“Breathe!” the doctor’s voice shouted in his face. “Don’t die on me, Marshal. Breathe!”

Longarm’s eyelids felt as if they were glued shut. His heart was pounding and he felt as if he were spinning off into space.

“Breathe!” the doctor yelled again, this time pinching Longarm’s cheeks and then slapping his face as hard as a bartender might slap a semi-conscious drunk.

Longarm’s eyes popped open and he sucked in a deep lungful of fresh air. Oh Lordy but it was sweet! All the dark clouds blew out of his mind and he stared up at the old doctor until he came into sharp focus.

“Doctor, what . . .”

“Maybe a little too much ether,” the doctor explained. “The bullet I had to dig out was very deep inside. It was a hard surgery. I couldn’t risk you waking up in the middle of it so I gave you ether even though you were unconscious. Just for a moment there I was afraid I had put you into a permanent sleep.”

“You mean killed me.”

“Yes. Although you were nearly dead when the train people carried you to my office. Frankly, Marshal Long, I didn’t think you would make it.”

“How do you know I’m a marshal?”

“I found your badge and wallet,” the doctor said as if the answer should have been obvious.

And it should have been only Longarm still wasn’t thinking with much clarity. Then he remembered the fight with Detective Upton. How they’d both fired simultaneously on the platform and fallen off the train. How he’d crawled under the trestle.

And the snakes! Longarm shivered at the memory. And the Paiutes!

“It’s a miracle that I’m still alive, Doc.”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” the doctor told him.

“The train people found Detective Upton. His body had been mutilated and stripped. Thrown in the brush not far from where you were found. They saw all the tracks of the Indians and their unshod ponies. How many of them were there?”

“Six.”

“How on earth did you hold the Paiutes off until the westbound arrived?

“I’ll tell you later,” Longarm said. “But right now I must send a message to Denver on the telegraph.”

“You can do that later.”

“No,” Longarm weakly insisted. “I need to send it today . Would you please take the message down on a pad and use my money to pay for it? I have to get word to my boss, Marshal Billy Vail.”

“Soon,” the doctor said. “But first, there is someone here that needs to see you.”

Longarm frowned. He did know a few women in Elko. But they could wait. What . . .

“Marshal Long!” Detective Jason Baxter blurted, hurrying past the doctor to bend over the heavily bandaged and prostrated Longarm. “We didn’t think you would make it.

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