Read Online Doctor and the Kid, The (A Weird West Tale) (Weird West Tales) by Mike Resnick - Free Book Online Page A

three men looked down at the train station in the middle of the barren valley.
    “It doesn't seem remarkable or unusual in any way,” remarked Edison, adjusting the polarity of his goggles to keep the sun from affecting his vision.
    “No super-hardened brass,” added Buntline, studying the walls of the station.
    “Geronimo says it's more than the station and the railway,” said Holliday. “He says even the people are immune to bullets and fire.”
    “Any people?” asked Edison. “If you were to drop me off there so I could wait for a train, would I be invulnerable?”
    Holliday shrugged. “I think so, but don't know for sure, and I didn't know how to test it out. I mean, if it doesn't affect passengers, then I could kill an awful lot of them.”
    “Sensible,” said Edison.
    Buntline nudged him. “Wind's starting to blow from the west, Tom,” he announced.
    “Bad?”
    “Could be. There's not much to stop it, and there's an awful lot of sand.”
    Buntline reached down and grabbed a cloth bag from the floor of the buckboard, then pulled out three round metal objects an inch in diameter, handing one each to Edison and Holliday while keeping the third for himself.
    “What the hell is this?” asked Holliday, examining it. “It's got a hundred little holes in it, but I can't see any use for it, and unlike most of Tom's inventions it doesn't seem to plug in anywhere.”
    “It's powered by one of these,” said Edison, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a tiny battery.
    “Powered to do what?” said Holliday suspiciously.
    “To filter the sand out of the air so you don't have to hide during a dust storm,” answered Edison. “Put it in your mouth like this , and remember not to breathe through your nose until the storm passes.”
    Buntline pointed toward the goggles that hung around Holliday's neck. “And put those damned things over your eyes if you don't want to go blind, Doc.”
    While Holliday was inserting the filter and donning the goggles, Buntline climbed down and put a contraption that seemed half-net and half-glass over the horse's head.
    “Now the horse won't choke or go blind either,” he announced when he'd climbed back onto the buckboard.
    Holliday clucked to the horse and the animal began pulling the wagon down to the station.
    “The tracks are just about covered,” he noted. “How do they get the sand off?”
    “The wind that covered them will uncover some of them,” answered Edison. “And along with cow-sweepers, the trains out here are equipped with kind of a brush that moves the sand off the tracks as the wheels approach it.”
    “One of your inventions?” asked Holliday.
    Edison shook his head. “A Mr. Glover from Chicago. Contrary to what you read in the papers,” he added with as much of a smile as he could manage with the filter in his mouth, “I am not responsible for every invention of the past dozen years.”
    When they were within one hundred yards of the station, the wind died down as quickly as it had spring up, and Holliday immediately took the filter out of his mouth and stuck it in a pocket. “Damned difficult to talk with that thing.”
    “My problem isn't talking,” said Edison. “It's remembering not to breathe through my nose.”
    “Place looks deserted,” remarked Buntline.
    “No reason why not,” said Holliday. “There's only one train every two days, and it passed through yesterday.”
    “Where does this damned thing go?” asked Buntline.
    “From what I hear, it goes to Tombstone and the other five towns in Arizona, then continues on to California.”
    “Where in California?”
    Holliday shrugged. “Beats me. I've never ridden it. Never been to California either.”
    Holliday reined the horse to a stop, and the three men climbed awkwardly down from the buckboard. Edison returned the filter to Buntline, who replaced it in the bag.
    “What about those?” asked Holliday, indicating Edison's and Buntline's goggles.
    “We'll keep them a bit