Free Longarm #399 : Longarm and the Grand Canyon Murders (9781101554401) by Tabor Evans Page B

that he, Henry, had shot him.
    “Please” was the urgent whisper.
    Henry had a goatskin bag of water. He grabbed it from what passed as a saddle and opened the stopper. “Drink,” he ordered, cradling the man’s head in one hand and pouring water into his mouth.
    Longarm drank and drank. The water was bitter, butit was wet, and he slapped some of it on his sunburned face to revive his senses. “I was shot in the back and need your help.”
    Henry did not want to roll the big man over and look at the bullet wound. “You are probably going to die.”
    “Maybe not.”
    Henry wasn’t sure what to do next. His hogan was at least six miles away over rough ground…his father, about five miles.
    “What can I do?”
    “A wagon.”
    “We do not have a wagon. Only sheep.”
    “A travois. Make a travois.”
    Henry stood up and walked around in a small, worried circle. He had helped Shoto make a travois once to move his mother to the reservation headquarters, where there was a doctor. He could make one now…but
should
he?
    Longarm opened his eyes wider and battled his pain. He wondered if the young Navajo was going to help him, or kill him and steal his belongings.
    “If you help me,” Longarm managed to croak, “I will repay you well.”
    “With money?”
    “Or that buckskin mare.”
    “I would rather have the mare and your saddle.”
    “Then it will become yours.”
    “I will make a travois,” Henry said, knowing that he would…in the end…have had no choice but to help this lawman, or else live the rest of his life riddled with guilt and maybe also cursed.
    Henry fired three shots from his old pistol, which he knew would bring his father on the run. Then he set about making the travois using his wool saddle blanket andcutting long poles. He was sure that his father would make changes in the travois and make it better, but he didn’t want to sit by the white man, who might die at any minute. If that happened, the man’s powerful spirit might consume Henry and drive him into screaming madness.

Chapter 11
    Longarm awoke to the sound of a baby crying and a woman’s soft, almost cooing voice. The hogan was dim, but a shaft of sunlight was now shining in his eyes through the doorway. The Navajo woman saw him try to sit, so she scooped up her infant and hurried outside. Moments later, the same young man that Longarm remembered offering to give his horse to now appeared with an older Navajo at his side.
    “Who are you?” Shonto asked in passable English.
    He took a couple of deep breaths to clear his head. “My name is Custis Long. United States Marshal Custis Long. I’m from Denver, Colorado, and I was ambushed.”
    The Indians exchanged glances, then the younger one said, “I did not shoot you and neither did my father.”
    “I know that,” Longarm told them, feeling very weak. “Two men from Flagstaff ambushed me. I think I killed one, but the other escaped.”
    “I found the dead one’s body,” Henry offered. “It was hidden under rocks and brush.”
    Longarm processed this information for a moment. “Did you see the one that got away?”
    Shonto nodded and pointed to the north.
    “How bad am I hurt?”
    Henry turned around, and he was supple enough of limb that he could reach behind his back and put his finger on a spot up near the shoulder blades.
    “Did you already dig the bullet out?”
    “Bullet pass through,” Shonto said, making a motion away from his own body. “Much blood in sand.”
    Longarm knew that he had about two days before the stage would pass anywhere close to this part of the reservation. He lay back down on the thin, straw pallet and closed his eyes. “I will give you the buckskin mare and my saddle as promised. You have my word on that.”
    Henry didn’t believe it. “White man lie, mostly.”
    “Not this one,” Longarm said weakly. “But I need to catch the stage going up to the Grand Canyon. It should come through in two days. Can you take me there?”
    “You